The very phrase "college radio" is a misnomer. Much like "public radio", it's best used only as a description of the format...not anything to do with ownership, management structure, or any sense of "accountability" to any sense of "the public". Many, many stations are OWNED by a college, but their format has nothing to do with the "underground/alternative music" and block-format or freeform format that most folks typically consider to be "college radio". Nor does it have much influence on whether the people at the station are students from the parent college, students from another college (or high school), community volunteers, part-time employees, or full-time employees. And finally, it doesn't have much correlation with how the formatting is done (i.e. how the music is chosen).
For example, WBRU is not owned by a college, but is physically based at Brown University, is owned by an entity comprised of people with strong Brown connections, and is almost entirely staffed by Brown University students. It is a fully commercial radio station, formatted and everything. Would you call it a "college radio" station?
I suppose a simple test could be this: if student activity fees are used to fund the station, then students should be involved. Perhaps not in management and/or in programming decisions per se...but there should be involvement somehow. AFAIK, there are no student activity fees involved with WUMB (nor WBUR for that matter). I'm not even sure how much actual funding they get from UMass/Boston; I think they have to be largely self-funded. Granted they have a lot of infrastructure costs covered (rent, some utilities) that help the bottom line quite a bit, but otherwise their budget has to raised on their own.
As an aside, one might argue that students must be involved if there's any funding from the college...and for purposes of the argument, we'll ignore "funding" that comes from neutral, inherent reductions in costs (i.e. free rent) and focus on a college actually paying for something (i.e. salaries or CD players). Personally, I don't buy this argument...colleges pay for lots of things where students aren't involved, or are only involved in a very limited way. Even so, like I said, I don't think WUMB gets any real funding from UMass/Boston.
