Earlier this month, the city council asked MIT officials to provide the council with an evaluation of the institute, including an analysis of program costs, course offerings and job placement for school graduates.

But MIT instead sent the council an "inadequate" one-page memo which failed to address any of those concerns, said Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55.

"This letter could have been written in five minutes, frankly, because it doesn't say anything," he said. "The least we deserve is an adequate explanation."

Shirley D. Nelson, a former teacher at Lowell, said the memo shows an "elitist" disdain by MIT for the larger Cambridge community.

"They chose to deal with the Nobel Prize winners...not with the city council or the people of Cambridge," Nelson said.

Councillors criticized MIT officials for eliminating an institution designed to educate Cambridge residents. In return for MIT's city tax exemption, councillors said the institute should work to strengthen community ties.

The $100,000 expenditure is "woefully and scandalously meager considering their tax-exempt status," Councillor Kathleen L. Born said.

"MIT is very much a public institution and, as such, it should be providing education to the public," she said.

Aram G. Hollman, a Lowell student, said the proposed school closing will do little to improve MIT's "image problem" within Cambridge.

"MIT is much less accessible to the Cambridge community than is Harvard, down the street," Hollman said. "It's a foreign place for most people in Cambridge."

Keeping the school open, however, would cost little money, further MIT's mission of providing quality education and enhance MIT's standing in the community, he said.

Gomez said she could not understand why MIT would close Lowell, especially since Lowell has historically helped residents access quality higher education.

"To take a strong, successful and helpful school and to close it is shameful," she said.

Some councillors and residents said legal action may be necessary to reverse MIT's decision.

According to John R. Pitkin, president of the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association, a mayoral panel of residents and Harvard, MIT and Lesley College officials has set strict guidelines about school/community relations.