Welcome back to The PHENOM Update, our official monthly newsletter where we keep you updated on the latest news from us and from around the higher ed world!
PHENOM’s 2025 Bills: They’re Live!
PHENOM is thrilled to announce we have secured sponsors for all five bills related to our campaigns. PHENOM’s 2025 platform is a mix of old and new. We remain in steady support of the Debt-Free Future Act and the Endowment Tax Act, and have introduced two new campaigns: Adjunct Faculty Reform and Financial Aid Reform.
All of these bills share a bold vision for a Massachusetts higher education system that works for students, teachers and staff instead of for Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy. Here is a summary of each bill and links to more information on the state legislature’s website.
Debt Free Future Act (HD.1473/SD.300)
- While Massachusetts has long prided itself as the education state, that title is slowly slipping away after decades of the state government cutting funding to public colleges. In order to cope, colleges like UMass-Lowell have raised tuition through the roof.
- The result is a crippling student debt crisis where bright, driven Bay Staters are punished for pursuing a college degree when we need college-educated workers more than ever. On average, graduates of public colleges like UMass-Amherst graduate with over $30,000 in debt, which makes it harder to buy a car, a home or plan for the future.
- The Debt-Free Future Act would stop Massachusetts’ student debt crisis at the source by mandating all public universities be tuition-free. By enshrining public higher education as a right, we would ensure all citizens can access well-paying jobs without being buried in debt for decades while supercharging our economy.
Endowment Tax (HD.1474/ SD.948)
- The Endowment Tax Act would levy a 2.5 percent tax on all Massachusetts private universities with endowments exceeding $1 billion. With an estimated revenue of at least $2 billion, the proceeds of this tax would be used to make all public colleges in Massachusetts tuition-free.
- This bill would punish elite private schools for refusing to use their immense wealth to educate more students, since their claim to serve the public is what makes them tax-exempt in the first place.
- This bill also taxes these elite schools because a huge portion of their endowments are from investments in the private market through hedge funds and private equity, which conflicts with their nonprofit status.
- Despite fear-mongering from officials at these colleges, this tax would not bankrupt these colleges at all. The 2.5 percent tax would be just a drop in the bucket.
Adjunct Faculty Pilot Program (HD.2545)
- Adjunct faculty are professors who lack the pay, benefits and job security necessary not only to live a stable, healthy life, but also to properly educate the students who depend on them. This is despite the fact many of them teach as much as regular professors.
- Universities have gotten away with denying adjunct professors equal treatment based on their status as temporary workers paid for each class. This is because it is much cheaper to have multiple part time professors on temporary contracts vs. making more professor positions.
- This legislation would do a trial of several policies to empower adjunct faculty, namely clear paths to career advancement, opportunities for professional development, course assignments as early as possible, access to important technology and resources, and health insurance for eligible adjuncts with at least half of a full-time teaching load.
Financial Aid Reform Bill (HD.2461/SD.2477)
- While Massachusetts’ financial aid has received much-needed funding boosts within the last decade, it still fails to adequately help the students who need it most due to poor investments in financial aid services.
- Students regularly either receive financial aid too late, don’t receive enough, or never hear about life changing financial aid opportunities in the first place. This has dire effects in an era of ever-rising tuition costs and student debt.
- The Financial Aid Reform Bill offers a long-overdue overhaul of Massachusetts’ outdated financial aid system focused on three principles: accessibility (through a centralized website), accountability (through a fair, timely appeals process), and advertisement (through targeted ad campaigns and training of guidance counselors).
Stay in the loop and follow us on Instagram!
As we work to rally students and faculty across the state to fight for a more affordable, fairer higher education system, social media is the go-to way to keep our allies and communities up to date. Check out our official statewide Instagram page @massphenom, as well as our chapter pages @umassaphenom and @dartmouth_phenom!
In Other News
Overcrowding in community colleges: a crisis and an opportunity
Multiple events in Massachusetts higher ed have converged to create the perfect opportunity to make our state colleges tuition-free, as PHENOM’s Liam Rue wrote in January.
As community colleges have too many students since becoming tuition-free, the UMass system is poised to become free for low-income students, and state colleges are suffering “plummeting enrollment”, making state colleges free has suddenly become a lot more palatable. It would kill multiple birds with one stone.
By making state colleges tuition-free, we would help alleviate the overcrowding of community colleges. In turn, the tens of thousands of students enrolled at these schools would no longer need to go into massive debt in order to invest in their future. With state colleges becoming free alongside community colleges, we would be one step closer to the gold standard of making all public colleges tuition-free.
The greatest reason to make state colleges tuition-free, though, is to ensure they can stay afloat.
State colleges are facing an existential crisis: since community colleges and UMass schools are creating their own tuition-free programs and state colleges are already not getting enough students, how can they survive without also becoming free?
In conclusion, making state colleges tuition-free is a no-brainer. All we need to do is get the money where it needs to go!
Gov. Healey announces major investment in campus, but there’s still work to do
In another major win for public higher ed, Governor Healey has announced that Massachusetts public colleges will receive a $2.5 billion investment in new laboratories, classrooms and mental health facilities, NBC Boston reports. According to the announcement, it will create 15,000 new jobs.
This represents a historic turnaround by the Massachusetts government after decades of cutting investment in our public colleges, as Gov. Healey herself noted. At Bridgewater State, where she announced the bill, there is $200 million in deferred maintenance.
The next piece of the puzzle will be helping campuses deal with the billions in debt they have already accumulated from past capital projects. The UMass system alone has $3 billion in capital debt, while the state college system has $1.2 billion.
As one article notes, many of these projects have been questionable efforts to attract out-of-state students; themselves in order to compensate for years of underfunding from the state government. Fortunately, Gov. Healey’s announcement puts us a lot closer to this next task: paying off our public colleges’ billions in debt that hurt students most.
Making sense of Trump’s attempted grant pause
The first two weeks of the new administration have been eventful to say the least, but particularly alarming for the higher education world was the (promptly reversed) freeze on federal research grants.
Although there was initially confusion over efforts to abruptly pause so much funding, observers have noted it could be a way to end regulations on “impoundment”, which bar the president from controlling government spending since the Constitution gives that power to Congress (i.e., the power of the purse!). The administration has since reversed the move, although it is likely a preview for similar efforts to come.
Another key motive seems to be Trump and company’s proclaimed war on “wokeness” as seen with attempts to rein in any programs associated with the broad but controversial “Diversity, Equity Inclusion” (DEI) framework. For instance, one highlight of the administration’s inquisition against grants has been the order to vet all articles containing certain “woke” language such as “diversity,” “inclusion,” “women,” and “race”.