Friend,
Welcome back to The PHENOM Update, our official monthly newsletter where we keep you updated on recent goings on in our campaigns and around the higher ed world!
After Meeting with Legislators, PHENOM’s Amendment Passes the Senate!
On April 10th, PHENOM students and volunteers met with Massachusetts lawmakers to call for a $10 million increase in financial aid funding for Massachusetts students across the Commonwealth in both public and private colleges.
The huge success that was the filing of this amendment would not have been possible without the passionate, laser-focused advocacy of students from UMass-Amherst, UMass-Dartmouth and Salem State University! Now that the amendment received overwhelming support in the Senate, it will be considered in the joint Senate-House budget meeting!
The budget increase, filed as Amendment #37, would increase statewide financial assistance to in-state Massachusetts students through the MASSGrant and MASSGrant Plus programs.
Unfortunately, Governor Healey has not increased the $80 billion in financial aid funding from 2024. This is such a problem as the federal government is threatening to dismantle the Department of Higher Education and make massive funding cuts to Massachusetts education at the same time that the number of college students is increasing: for the first time in half a decade, the number of college students increased during FY 24.
Do some basic mental math and the potential fallout is clear: students are at risk of losing crucial financial aid. This is especially disparaging, because, for a lot of students, especially those who are low-income and first-generation students, MASSGrant and MASSGrant Plus is the difference between getting their degree and dropping out.
We hope that Massachusetts’ legislators will recognize the importance of protecting financial aid funding as much as possible during a time of severe funding cuts, tuition hikes, and a growing number of college students!
Speaking of which, the fight isn’t over! Urge your legislator to support more financial aid funding!
Just take 10 seconds out of your day and send this letter to your legislators urging them to support Amendment #37, which would add $10 million to Massachusetts’ financial aid funding!
But wait, why are we pushing for more financial aid funding at this very moment?
This year, public colleges are raising tuition across the Commonwealth, while financial aid is not increasing. Coupled with the threat of federal funding cuts, this means our once-affordable public colleges are getting more expensive for everyone.
If we don’t do something about this, countless bright students working towards a better future will have to either take on more debt, work longer hours or drop out.
Fortunately, there is hope: PHENOM and our legislative allies have filed Amendment #37, which would add $10 million to the state’s financial aid budget if passed!
While $10 million is still not enough, it would make a huge difference to students and families throughout the Commonwealth struggling to afford college.
The only reason we cannot ask for even more funding is because of just how dire the threat of federal funding cuts is – itself a testament for how important securing this financial aid funding is.
There’s no time to waste! Just take 10 seconds to send this letter to your legislators urging them to increase financial aid funding!
In Other News:
Another ‘Breakdown’ in Federal Student Aid?
After the notoriously tumultuous financial aid season of 2024-2025, students across America are in for yet another debacle for the coming year. This article reports America’s financial aid system is having yet another crisis due to funding cuts that have left critical services understaffed, employees burnt out, and students concerned they’ll even get their aid on time if at all.
Fifty percent of respondents in a small survey said the time needed to process their application was longer, while 25 percent received no acknowledgement of their application submission at all.
There is, as usual, loads of finger-pointing as the Trump administration blames the crisis on their predecessor’s incompetence. However, the current president seems to have an outsize role in the current challenges since they have been responsible for layoffs, closures of regional offices, cancellations of crucial contracts, and an overall communication breakdown as employees are left in the dark.
House Republicans Want to Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Debt
House Republicans are pushing for a bold yet controversial plan to put colleges on the hook for their students’ debt. According to this plan, colleges would have to reimburse the government for unpaid student loans in a form of “risk-sharing”. According to its supporters, this would penalize colleges with a “poor return on investment” that leave students without excessive debt without the credentials and experience necessary to pay it off.
The plan is part of a larger, also controversial plan to cut higher education funding by $330 billion over the next 10 years. According to critics, though, this plan is simply too complicated to pull off because of all of the different factors going into student loans.
Also, they contend, a key flaw is its one-size-fits-all approach that lumps together all colleges, public and private, big and small, rich and poor. One lobbying group’s study (whether to be taken seriously or not) found that public regional and minority serving institutions would be hurt the most.
Regardless of how good this plan is, the Republicans’ plan raises a good point: why aren’t we holding colleges more accountable for the national tragedy that is our student debt crisis? While the student loan industry has been the one hooking students with decades of debt, it has been colleges who normalized reliance on student loans and enabled the ensuing student debt crisis.
America’s public universities have tolerated decades of funding cuts and tuition increases instead of demanding enough funding to keep costs affordable. Not only that, in more recent years, colleges have abused the system of student loans as a blank check to raise tuition as much as they want and spend money they do not actually have with the idea that students could simply take on more and more debt.
House panel advances bill to raise college endowment tax up to 21%
While Massachusetts is still hotly debating its own endowment tax, people forget Trump and Republicans already passed their own national endowment tax in 2017. Now, in the newest House budget bill that just passed, there is a plan to raise the endowment tax up to 21 percent on the richest universities.
The headline is a bit misleading, because the tax would only be that much for four incredibly rich universities: specifically, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT and Stanford, all of whom have over $2 million per student in their endowments.
The other taxation tiers are 1.4 percent; 7 percent; and 14 percent according to how much money a college has per student, ranging from $500,000 per student to the $2 million that triggers the rate of 21 percent. Because of how rich a college has to be to fall into any of these categories, it is ultimately a fairly harmless policy as it merely targets the institutions that can afford it.
This type of tax is also very promising because it incentivizes colleges to teach as many students as possible: since more money per student correlates to less students actually being educated, it incentivizes colleges to admit more students if they do not want to be taxed. This is the main reason PHENOM has fought tooth and nail for an endowment tax in Massachusetts: when colleges like Harvard and MIT refuse to use all of the money at their disposal to educate as many students as possible (or at least more than they are educating right now), why not tax them and use the revenue to educate more students at public colleges?
After all, these colleges’ nonprofit status rests on the claim they serve the public, and how are they serving the public if they educate so few students yet have more money than they know what to do with? Harvard is richer than the entire country of Jordan, to put things in perspective. I think they can afford to educate a few thousand more students, but if not we should gladly transfer their money towards the public schools who will serve the public.
Massachusetts has already collected $2.6b in ‘millionaires tax’ cash, surging past state projections
This article reports that the Fair Share Amendment (a.k.a. the Millionaire’s Tax) is even more successful than expected. The tax, intended to fund education and transportation infrastructure with a tiny tax of 4 percent on Massachusetts’ millionaires, ended up generating over $2.6 billion in revenue.
This could not come at a better time as President Trump is crippling K-12 schools and colleges with funding cuts. It is also a refreshing reminder of all the good that taxing the rich can do!
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