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.