University of Massachusetts Amherst PHENOM Campus Council

Contact: Nancy Folbre, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 545-3283 or folbre@econs.umass.edu

For Immediate Release  October 15, 2007

Campus activists and community members will meet for a lecture by Adolph Reed Jr., followed by a discussion of the idea of free public higher education in the United States.  The lecture will be at 5:30 PM on Wednesday, October 17^th in New Africa House at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Professor Reed, an internationally renowned political scientist from the University of Pennsylvania, will lecture on the same topic at 11AM on October 17^th in 309 Frost Building at Holyoke Community College. More than one hundred faculty, staff and students are expected to attend the talk at UMass Amherst. 

Governor Deval Patrick made free higher education a centerpiece of his agenda when he announced the Readiness Project, his far-reaching commission on public education.  In his first major policy address, Patrick said “we need to change fundamentally the way we think about and deliver public education in this commonwealth,” and proposed free community college as part of his ten-year plan.  The state legislature has recognized that the rising price of college excludes many citizens, and is considering bills on loan forgiveness and other ways of promoting affordability.  During his visit, Professor Reed will advance a broader version of Governor Patrick’s plan: free higher education for all qualified students. 

Campus activists insist that the federal government can afford to pay the cost of tuition and fees for college students. The total cost of tuition and fees for all students enrolled in public colleges and universities in 2001 was approximately $32 billion – less than 2% of the federal budget, according to www.freehighered.org.  Jeff Napolitano, President of the Graduate Student Senate, says: “Working and middle-class students are being priced out of public higher education, just at the time when a college degree has become what a high-school degree used to be. A little more financial aid, or lower interest rates on student loans is not enough.  Governor Patrick has made steps in the right direction, but we need free higher education for all, today.”

Professor Reed, a leading expert on free public higher education, is a major scholar of American and African American political thought. His recent books include Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and the Retreat from Racial Equality (2001), Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (2000), and others, and his articles appear in The Nation, The Progressive and other journals.  He also serves on the National Council of the Labor Party. 

This event is organized by the UMass Amherst Council of the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), a coalition of students, staff, and faculty at Massachusetts public university, state, and community college campuses. A statewide PHENOM Higher Education Summit is planned for October 26 at Framingham State University. For more information see www.phenomonline.org.

Reed’s talk is co-sponsored by UMass Amherst organizations including: Student Government Association, Graduate Student Senate, Student Bridges Program, University Staff Association, the ALANA Caucus, the Graduate Employee Organization, Massachusetts Society of Professors, and the Committee for Collegiate Education of Black and Other Minority Students.