A Generation is Hobbled by Student Debt (New York Times, May 13, 2012)

Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education – up from 45 percent in 1993, according to an analysis by The New York Times of the latest data from the Department of Education. ..”If one is not thinking about where this is headed over the next two or three years, you are just completely missing the warning signs,” said Rajeev V. Date, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal watchdog created after the financial crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »

As many as 300,000 students have been on strike against tuition increases in Quebec over the past 3 months, with 180,000 still out on an unlimited strike. Demonstrations of more than  250,000 people have taken place in Montreal.  A massive movement against austerity and for education as a right and not a privilege is unfolding just a few hundred miles from here -- unknown to most Americans since it has been ignored by the mainstream media.  In a small effort to break through this wall of silence, PHENOM helped bring two of the strikers to Massachusetts April 25-27.

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The House passed its version of the 2012-13 budget after adopting an amendment that added $1.1 million to the financial aid account.  This means that financial aid will be funded the same next year as this year.  The amount appropriated for campus operating budgets was not changed and remains the same as this year.  The budget does include a collective bargaining reserve to fund the contracts negotiated by staff and faculty unions.

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Occupy HCC is a new group doing important work at Holyoke Community College, and in coalition with other community colleges and members of the greater Holyoke community.  Please read about their activities in their newsletter, and feel free to contact them at occupyhcc@gmail.com, especially if you are at another community college.

We ran out of packets.  We ran out of lunches.  But we certainly didn’t run out of passion or energy!

Over 500 students, staff and faculty from almost every one of the public campuses came to the State House on March 8 with a simple powerful message: Public Higher Education is critical to the residents of Massachusetts, to our economy, and to our future, and must be adequately funded.  After inspirational speeches (list of speakers below), 40 people held up signs with the names of the 40 State Senators, and a huge mass of people snaked their way through the auditorium to form lobby groups.  Armed with talking points, maps of the State House, lobbying tips, and — most important — personal stories, the groups went to visit their Senators, and then their Representatives.  After lunch, participants regrouped by school and visited the legislators who represent their school.     [See videos and media coverage.] Read the rest of this entry »

The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees voted on December 14 to seek a 20% increase in its budget from the state in Fiscal Year 2013.  This is an unusually large request, but is exactly the sort of bold move PHENOM has been advocating for a long time.  The needs on our campuses are many and they are very pressing  — financial aid for students at risk of incurring untenable debt, funding for staff and faculty union contracts, a huge deferred maintenance backlog, student support programs, restoring the number of full-time faculty, and so on. The Department of Higher Education has submitted a more modest budget proposal for the community colleges and state universities that represents a 5% increase from last year (plus funding for union contracts).