One of PHENOM’s priorities is finding ways to improve graduation rates at public colleges in a way which is meaningful and stays true to our goal of meaningfully improving accessibility for poor and working class students. The neoliberal approach currently being pursued by Beacon Hill focuses on increasing graduation rates by increasing selectivity, using metrics which will increasingly exclude students on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Our approach includes proposals like the finish line grant, which is apparently receiving attention on the renowned economics blog, the baselinescenario.

PHENOM has begun a series of meetings with newspaper editorial boards.  Our April 27 meeting with the Hampshire Gazette led to a reporter and photographer riding the bus with us from Northampton and publishing a full page spread on the Act to Invest in Our Communities.  On June 2, we met with the Berkshire Eagle who published this editorial on June 6.  We have a lot of important information and perspectives to share.  Please contact us with opportunities to discuss public higher education — the crisis and the solutions.

UMass President Jack Wilson, Commissioner of Higher Education Richard Freeland and PHENOM Vice President Max Page were invited to address the formal founding of the Joint House-Senate Public Higher Education Caucus on February 10.  With many legislators and college administrators in attendance, Max clearly laid out what needs to happen for Massachusetts to have the public higher education system our residents deserve and our economy needs.  Please read and circulate.

Check out this great slide show about PHENOM’s March 8, 2010 rally on the Boston Common, as experienced by a first-time rally-goer.

Have you checked out the PHENOM blog?  More and more, the press turns to PHENOM for commentary on issues concerning public higher education.  Now they have discovered the blog as a useful source.  Read here what PHENOM’s Vice President is quoted saying about the new UMass President.

This newsletter from the Massachusetts Community College Council contains a very detailed report and great photos from PHENOM’s Rally, March, Race to the Median, and State House Day March 8, 2010.

For higher ed, ‘Vision’ first, then follow-through

May 14, 2010

KUDOS FOR editorializing that “there is something fundamentally wrong with a state education system that puts so much attention on getting its K-12 students ready for college only to give short shrift to the state’s five public university campuses, nine state colleges, and 15 community colleges’’ (“A ‘Vision Project’ for higher ed,’’ May 5). Read the rest of this entry »

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a United Nations treaty that, among other things, says: “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.”  160 countries have ratified this treaty.  The United States has not.

The waiver will allow the state to forgo rules stipulating how the $813 million in education stimulus funding received by the Commonwealth should be spent in the second and third year of the funding.

Through the waiver, which was granted Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, the state is no longer bound by stimulus strings that dictated the Commonwealth, in fiscal year 2010 (which begins at the end of the month) and 2011 must fund its 29 institutions of higher education at levels at least equal to fiscal year 2006 support. Read the rest of this entry »

Higher Education Advocates Protest Use of Stimulus Funds

By Peter Schworm, Boston Globe Staff

June 4, 2009

A Massachusetts higher education advocacy group filed a federal complaint yesterday against the Patrick administration, contending that state officials are spending stimulus money meant for colleges and universities to bridge the state’s general budget deficit.

The Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts, known as PHENOM, argues that the state is sidestepping provisions in the federal stimulus law by using money earmarked for education elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »