Mass. Higher Education Advocates Need to Step Up Fight for Fully Government-Funded Public Higher Education

There was some good news this week for Massachusetts public college students in the form of Gov. Deval Patrick's announcement that the federal government will provide $162 million in stimulus funds to the state's higher education system - about half going to the 5-campus University of Massachusetts, and the rest going to the 24 Mass. state and community colleges. As a result, significant planned fee increases for students will be reduced to roughly pre-crisis levels for the coming year. At UMass, this translates to a 4 percent increase in student fees instead of a 15 percent increase - which is about the same as the annual increase for last several years. The federal government will also be increasing the maximum Pell Grant from $4700 to $5350 and adding $9 million for work-study programs.

However, Open Media Boston can only give two cheers to this outcome because 4 percent is still too much of an increase for a state higher education system that has seen tuition and fees double in the last decade. And we can hardly accept the fact that private colleges like Harvard, MIT, Northeastern and BU still suck up a majority of total federal monies for higher education while the public colleges educate a majority of the students and get less than their fair share. Nor, as we've stated on numerous occasions, can we accept why private colleges should get any government money at all and be allowed to remain private.

In addition, increasing Pell Grants may allow students that are already stopping their education because of cost issues to hang on for a while longer, but it is still a loan program. And student loans are one of the worst kinds of debts to have. Not because they have the highest interest rate, but because failure to pay them off results in far more serious penalties than even credit card problems cause. Especially since people are expected to pay the loans off even if they successfully declare bankruptcy and because any monies coming from federal sources can be seized to payoff the debt - including tax refunds.

Besides, all bets are off for the coming fiscal year and all subsequent years as the global financial situation continues to worsen. So while the worst has been staved off for now, Patrick is still calling for belt tightening and UMass Boston Chancellor Keith Motley is still using communitarian language of shared sacrifice in tough times. Both sentiments are signals that things are only going downhill from here for public higher education.

So this the federal stimulus is doing little more than providing a breather for students and delaying the inevitable - which is that the state and federal governments have to decide whether they are going to be willing to fully fund higher education like they fund K-12 education ...

... or if we're going to go back to a Massachusetts and United States where only the wealthy can afford a college education and the opportunities that often spring from it. With coming generations of working families being told to take a hike.

Open Media Boston therefore encourages the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Students Uniting and their constituent unions and student governments to redouble their efforts to push for more equitable solutions to the economic destabilization of the Massachusetts public higher education system.

We recognize that it's tempting to expect significant improvements from more-or-less competent technocrats like Deval Patrick and Barrack Obama, but it is important for advocates not to let their guard down until the situation is much more secure. Higher education unions can certainly expect more job cuts in the years to come, and students can expect the cost of tuition and fees to continue to go up and up.

Without structural reforms, the current stimulus package is simply the calm before the storm. So it's important for PHENOM, MSU and others to really be an opposition to the status quo in higher education policy, and to continue pushing for a more than just occasional federal cash infusions and decreases in scheduled tuition and fee increases. Victory cannot be declared until higher education is established as a publicly-funded right for all Massachusetts working families. Lobbying as usual is therefore not going to cut it on this issue. A much more militant stance will be required. It remains to be seen if the advocates are up to the task.

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston.