Massachusetts: Government, Politics, and Higher Education

The governor of Massachusetts is elected for a four-year term. The legislature (the General Court) has a senate of 40 members and a house of representatives with 160 members, all of whom serve two-year terms. Massachusetts sends 9 representatives and 2 senators to the U.S. Congress and has 11 electoral votes. The state is predominantly Democratic, but from 1991-2007 Republicans held the governor's chair.

Massachusetts is historically the capital of American higher education. Besides Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at Cambridge, noted institutions include Amherst College, at Amherst; the Univ. of Massachusetts, at Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and Worcester; Boston College, at Chestnut Hill; Boston Univ., Simmons College, and Northeastern Univ., at Boston; Brandeis Univ., at Waltham; Clark Univ., College of the Holy Cross, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, at Worcester; Mount Holyoke College, at South Hadley; Smith College, at Northampton; Tufts Univ., at Medford; Wellesley College, at Wellesley; Wheaton College, at Norton; Williams College, at Williamstown; and the institutions of the Massachusetts State Colleges and Universities. The state is also renowned for its private secondary schools, such as Phillips Academy (Andover) and for research centers such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, at Falmouth.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• World War II to the Present
• The Growth of the Cities and the Labor Movement
• Industrialization and Immigration
• Reform Movements and Civil War
• The New Nation
• Discontent and Revolution
• A New Royal Colony
• The Puritan Colonies
• Early European Exploration and Colonization
• Government, Politics, and Higher Education
• Economy
• Geography
• Facts and Figures

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