On Monday, the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers launched a national joint campaign, in collaboration with the Roosevelt Institute, called “A New Deal for Higher Education,” which advocates for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and large-scale federal investment in the higher education sector.
“Decades of disinvestment in public education, in particular higher ed, has led to chronic underfunding of our institutions,” said Dr. Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, at a virtual launch event on Zoom. “This is responsible in large part for the student debt crisis, for widening racial inequities and for an impoverished academic profession. Those of us in higher ed have long recognized that this is unsustainable. Now is the time for a New Deal for higher ed.”
Mulvey encouraged educators to take immediate action and support President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which would put $35 billion in emergency funding toward protecting jobs in higher education and toward enabling in-person learning through vaccinations, testing and other safety measures. But she warned against a “Band-Aid approach” to higher education’s inequities in reaction to the pandemic.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley agreed that higher education can’t revert to an “insufficient, unjust normal.” She pointed to declining state funding for public universities, including historically Black colleges and other minority serving institutions, which she described as “beacons of economic mobility” for Black and Latinx communities. She also pointed to Pell Grants and federal financial aid programs as neglected and in need of government investment.
Pressley called on her fellow lawmakers to push the Biden administration to take executive action on cancelling student loan debt; ensure university staff encounter fair labor practices; and reauthorize a Higher Education Act that increases the Pell Grant and puts more funding toward campus childcare, transportation and mental health supports.
“We truly need a New Deal for higher education, one that invests in public education as the public good that it is, one that invests [in] and supports the higher education workforce [and] diversifies the pipeline of our future educators, researchers and faculty that will go on to shape the future our nation so desperately needs,” Pressley said. “And this will take an all-hands-on-deck approach at every level of government.”
In a video played at the event, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren highlighted the student debt crisis, describing it as an “anchor dragging down our struggling economy and holding millions of people back,” especially Black and Brown borrowers and teachers. She pointed to the resolution she introduced with Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt per student, and, in the long term, advocated for “free tuition and zero debt” at public colleges and universities.
