February 2012
6 posts
3 tags
In Survey, Bankruptcy Lawyers Warn of Student Debt...
From Inside Higher Ed: February 8, 2012 - 3:00am A majority of more than 800 bankruptcy lawyers in a survey say they have seen an increase in clients with student loans over the past few years and that most of those debtors are unlikely to be able to discharge their loans due to “undue hardship.” The survey, published by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, found...
MARCH 8 LOBBY DAY AT THE STATE HOUSE
Please distribute widely
Public Higher Education
Lobby Day
March 8, 2012
Register now at bit.ly/MALobbyDay2012
Please join students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni for a giant day of advocacy for our public colleges and universities. Buses and vans will be coming from around the state so we can talk to our legislators about the importance of public higher education to students and the...
A little hope for the future...
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/getting-more-liberal-with-age/?hp
Obama's budget and community colleges
The focus on community colleges as job training centers is part of the President’s budget as well
http://chronicle.com/article/President-to-Seek-8-Billion/130758/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Max Page
As we begin the debate on community colleges...
….it couldn’t hurt to review what the citizens of Massachusetts said about the purposes of education when they ratified the Commonwealth’s Constitution in 1780.
Chapter V, Section II.
Wisdom, and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the...
Where Americans Most Depend on Government... →
Here is a stunning map from today’s New York Times, which suggests AB the importance of public spending to preserve the lower and, increasingly, middle classes and B) how those states most eager to cut government spending are the biggest beneficiaries.
Max Page
January 2012
20 posts
PHENOM's Response to Governor Patrick's Budget...
Governor’s Budget Taxes Students and Workers, not the 1%
The Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (www.phenomonline.org) recognizes the painful cuts in many areas of Governor Patrick’s budget proposal and thanks the Governor for mostly holding the line on higher education after several years of catastrophic cuts. At the same time, we urge the state to make the real long term...
Lecture notice -- Feb. 3, 4:30 -- Mount Holyoke...
This might be of interested to PHENOM members:
Steven J. Tepper
“Creative Work and the Work of Creativity
How Colleges and Universities Can Prepare Graduates to Reinvent Our World”
Lecture by Steven J. Tepper Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy Vanderbilt University
Friday, 3 February 4:30 p.m....
COMMUNITY COLLEGE: REAL ISSUES AND GOVERNOR...
The governor is proposing a major change in the community college system, which has three components:
· A small carrot of more money, $10 million for the system as a whole, about a 5% increase
· A re-structuring of the system to make it controlled from the top and reduce campus autonomy
· A shift toward serving the interests of business and preparing students for the jobs...
PHENOM Board president, Stasha Lampert, quoted in... →
Craig Slatin
The National Disinvestment
Declining state support for public higher education is a national epidemic.
Max Page
2 tags
Kids These Days...
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple-Dollar/2011/1016/Blame-students-for-loan-debt-Not-so-fast.?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2Fcsm+%28Christian+Science+Monitor+%7C+All+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
A Whole Different Approach
“The country has, for the most part, continued to subscribe to the once dominant European notion that higher education is a public good, to be financed from the public purse.”
This article discusses higher education in Germany and shows a different way is possible — if there is a mass anti-racist movement for affordable quality education for the 99%. One of my favorite...
Evan Dobelle on the economic value of investing in... →
One of PHENOM’s strong supporters makes the case for investing in public higher education.
Max Page
4 Letters to the Globe, Criticism of the Globe's... →
Last one is particularly informative.
I COULD not disagree more with the Globe’s editorial position regarding the proper mission of Massachusetts community colleges ( “What are community colleges for? Mass. must make up its mind,’’ Jan. 4). If the sole purpose of the community colleges is to “prepare students for gainful employment,’’ providing, as the Globe suggests, “customized training for...
On Administrator Salaries
Brian Mcgrory in the Globe.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-13/metro/30620368_1_umass-system-chancellor-umass-amherst
Max Page
Deval Patrick on John Stewart
Yes, this is old, but worth a watch, especially in the discussion about taxes and investments in education.
Max Page
The Student Debt Crisis
If that middle-of-the-road policy magazine, Commonwealth (published Mass Inc.) starts focusing on student debt, then it must be going mainstream. This follows President Robert Caret’s impressive oped in the Globe from a few weeks ago. In a meeting with PHENOM’s Board on Tuesday, he reiterated the importance of this debt issue and how we as a system must work hard to reverse the trend...
Robert Reich on the decline of public goods
http://www.nationofchange.org/decline-public-good-1325858730
Max Page
WBUR Radio on disinvestment in public higher...
Worth a listen, especially to what Paul Reville and Marty Meehan have to say.
Max Page
Volume 1256 of If Those Are Your Friends....
Speaker Robert DeLeo on the “Massachusetts Miracle.” That is a term that was once used for Massachusetts’ economic boom. Now “miracle” is used for sticking it to public workers and refusing to ask the wealthiest (and Massachusetts has some of the wealthiest of the wealthiest) to pay their fair share.
DeLeo will preside over more cuts this spring and will declare...
We are not a meritocracy
We can be patriotic, but we don’t have to be stupid. The United States is the least meritocratic of major western nations. How much you start with and who your parents are matters more than hard work.
Max Page
A Primer for When They Start Telling Lies about...
Facts are rarely enough when dealing with the angry fantasies of the right wing, but they are at least useful to have around.
Max Page
New York Times - Economists study the added value... →
Now here’s a piece of work from economic researchers - looking at the value added to society when teachers are able to produce students who get better standardized testing scores. Can you imagine if economists looked at the value added when employers provide healthy and safe workplaces or living wages or support national health insurance or pay taxes that will support a strong...
The Secret Behind the Finland's "Miracle"
This really is worth a read. It is largely about K-12 education but its lessons — that ignoring economic inequity, and focusing on “accountability” are precisely the wrong approaches — need to be heard.
Given the Commonwealth’s new “Vision Project” — a nice cover for “performance funding” — I especially liked this...
Another reason we need progressive taxes, and not...
PHENOM supports the Act to Invest in Our Communities, a progressive tax proposal that would generate upwards of $1.4 billion dollars a year in a progressive manner.
Our tax system is upside down, as this recent article about the film tax “incentive” (read: giveaway) suggests. In order to spur economic development, the state has provided an incredibly generous tax break —...
December 2011
10 posts
UMass President Robert Caret chooses to focus in...
Impressive. Enough to give activists for public higher education some hope.
Max Page
Boston Globe, December 24, 2011
An age of demoralizing debt
As financial burdens on college students grow, the social strain is showing
By Robert L. Caret
|
December 24, 2011
THE NUMBER itself is daunting: $1 trillion in student debt. That means there is more student debt than credit card debt...
A letter to the editor from a PHENOM member -...
Conditions at UMass Boston are scandalous
OUTGOING UNIVERSITY of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson’s salary deal is outrageous not simply because it is exceptionally high compared with salaries of other outgoing college presidents, nor because he is being paid an administrator salary to no longer be an administrator (“Ex-UMass chief given deal totaling $568,429,’’ Page A1, Dec. 13). The ...
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It? →
An excellent oped which argues that federal education policy seems blind to the relationship between poverty and student performance.
Max Page
And this tidbit about Rutgers and its athletic...
from Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Athletics Deficit at Rutgers U. Reaches Highest Level Ever
December 12, 2011, 11:46 am
Despite its on-field success, Rutgers University has seen its athletics-budget deficit continue to grow, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., reports. The program’s shortfall last year forced the university to divert millions of dollars from student fees, tuition, and state tax funds to...
Derrick Jackson of the Globe, speaking some truth...
http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/articles/2011/12/11/the_money_pit/
“Big-time college sports is the corpulent monster swallowing itself into fatal collapse. The heart of the enterprise, the amateur student-athlete model, is nearly drained of its last blood, flowing instead with multi-billion-dollar television contracts, multi-million-dollar coaches and an idolatrous culture that cowers...
How the For-Profits Weakened Reform Legislation
Remember when you felt good at how the Obama Administration was really going to reform the corrupt, welfare-queens of the education world — aka, the for-profit higher education industry, the people who earn all their profits by getting Pell Grants and then provide a bad education to their students? Not so fast.
Max Page
A good survey of recent books on higher education
I would urge everyone to take a look at this article by Anthony Grafton in the New York Review of Books, which offers a nice survey of some of the best recent books on higher education, including one by our own Nancy Folbre (by “own” I mean UMass Amherst professor and long-time member of PHENOM).
...
Forget Shorter Showers | Derrick Jensen | Orion... →
A useful reminder about where we should be directing our activist energies.
Max Page
Perhaps free higher education is on the agenda... →
Obama meets with university leaders to discuss college affordability.
Max Page
David Montgomery
A great labor historian and activist has died.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164954/david-montgomery-1927-2011
November 2011
11 posts
And many of our students take out loans, maintain...
Here’s a piece I read in the Boston Globe this morning. The author reports that students with college financial needs who don’t take out loans are less likely to complete their college education. Ah, the problem of the public higher education campus administrator who has bought into the higher cost/higher financial aid model for running a public higher education campus. This is...
Worth a read: the value of a college degree
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/changing-rules-for-success.html?_r=1&hp
A reminder about teachers' unions
In the vain hope that facts might actually penetrate the thick heads on the other side:
Critics have long alleged that teacher unions hinder student performance and educational progress. No empirical or credible research has ever been offered to substantiate these allegations. The only five states that do not permit collective bargaining for teachers are all near the very bottom in student...
From our "Friends" at the Boston Foundation
If only it were a farce….
The Commonwealth cuts funding to public higher education, so there are fewer full-time faculty, and fewer services to support our students.
The Commonwealth raises tuition and fees, making our students work longer and making it more likely that they will drop out.
And then the Boston Foundation spends lots of money on writing a report that says that the real...
Student Debt Default Campaign
Coming out of one of the Occupy Wall Street working groups is this campaign, is a movement calling on students to sign onto a pledge to default on their student loans if one million students sign on, and to ask faculty to support their students stand against the student loan system which has shackled students to tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for decades. The movement...
A powerful statement by a UC Davis faculty member
http://wp.me/pdWkR-5F
Money from casinos will flow to public higher...
From today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette, a report about PHENOM’s successful efforts to guarantee that public higher education would benefit from casinos in Massachusetts.
Max Page
California Faculty Union goes on Strike →
thousands of faculty members made history by participating in the first-ever strike of the California State University system.
The message to the Chancellor was loud and clear from six in the morning until dark: “If you don’t start making decisions based on what is right for the 99% this system serves – instead of the 1% of executives and upper managers running the system — these actions will...
Report from Occupy Wall Street, N17
Here a brief report from the November 17 Occupy Wall Street events. I arrived intending to meet up with my colleague Dan Clawson. But on the train I got a note that Dan had been arrested that morning, in the efforts by protesters to stop business downtown. Dan was one of a group of protesters who sat in the middle of an intersection, at Nassau and Pine, again police orders. (Dan was release...
October 2011
7 posts
The Growing "Mainstream" Issue of Public Higher...
From my “UMass certified” ability to analyze political trends, I think we’re on the verge of really seeing public higher education emerge as a mainstream issue. As Max points out in the previous post, Massachusetts senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has touched on student debt numerous times during her stump speeches, additionally, I think its fairly safe to assume that student...
Student Debt, on the Agenda in Very Different...
Elizabeth Warren keeps bringing up student debt in her stump speeches. Here she is at a Northampton fundraiser today:
“We now live in a world in which the largest corporations, and most profitable … pay nothing in taxes while we say to young people you have to take on more debt to get an education and say to seniors you’ll just going to have to learn to live on less,”...
PHENOM Board member, Craig Slatin, on the Occupy...
From Today’s Boston Globe:
RE “FINANCIAL District takes measure of the protests’’ (Page A1, Oct. 14): The Globe’s reporting of viewpoints of finance sector employers and employees captured honest views. Honesty, however, does not guarantee thorough analysis. Just as “it takes a village’’ to raise a child, it takes the work of many to make someone wealthy enough to be in the top 1 percent...