Check out PHENOM’s Spring 2015 Newsletter by following this link. Some highlights include a recap of Public Higher Education Advocacy Day, PHENOM’s state legislative agenda, a response to President Obama’s Free Community College Proposal, and highlights of a new paper on the student debt crisis.
Read the fall-winter issue of the PHENOM newsletter on your screen, and then let us know if you would like a batch to distribute. It includes interesting material on student fees and student debt, State House advocacy, the Quebec student uprising, and more. Please write to us at massphenom@gmail.com if you would like copies to use in your […]
With the June 2013 annual meeting, PHENOM reorganized its structure to encourage more organizing on campuses and in communities, while continuing to be effective in our statewide work. Membership now requires active involvement in PHENOM’s work at a chapter or the statewide level, rather than a dues payment. Chapters are defined as six or more […]
Last year, hundreds of thousands of students throughout Quebec were on strike for much of the year in a fight against tuition increases. The strike succeeded in reversing the increase, and even brought down the provincial government. When PHENOM helped to host two visiting strikers last year, it inspired members to see for themselves. Eleven […]
Neil MacInnes-Barker has been a busy guy since he served as Student Government President at UMass Boston. All those speakers on Advocacy Day 2013 were flanked by a poster based on the info-cards he designed and distributed at the program in 2012. It’s all part of “EducateMA,” founded in 2012 to bridge the gap between […]
By Anastasia Wilson In June, the Massachusetts legislature took a step to investigate student debt by creating a Subcommittee on Student Debt as part of the Joint Committee on Higher Education. The subcommittee, chaired by Berkshire State Representative Paul Mark, will critically examine rising college costs in the Commonwealth, assess the effects of rising […]
By Ken Haar, Westfield State University In this year’s budget battle, the legislature and the governor dramatically reversed a decades-long trend of reducing spending on public higher education. This happened for a number of reasons, with an improving economy among them. But other key factors included educating the governor and the legislature about the […]
Over 500 students, staff and faculty from almost every one of the public campuses came to the State House on March 8, 2012 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. “Costs have risen dramatically,” said […]
by Max Page First, the bad news. Once again, when all the dust settled on the budget, the Governor and Legislature pushed through takeaways from public employees and continued to underfund public services, all the while refusing to ask the wealthiest members of the Commonwealth (who have been getting much wealthier) to contribute a […]
by Ellen Michaud Martins, UMass Lowell On May 18, 2012, the Adjunct Faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell overwhelmingly ratified their first-ever union contract–between the University and United Auto Workers Local 1596. In voting to ratify, the adjunct faculty made history at UML and became part a growing trend of unionization in […]