The AAUP office reopened on September 7, 2021. Contact information for all staff, including those working remotely or on a hybrid schedule, is available here.
The AAUP office reopened on September 7, 2021. Contact information for all staff, including those working remotely or on a hybrid schedule, is available here.
The AAUP legislative agenda lists priorities for advocacy at the national and state level on issues that affect the academic profession and campus community members more broadly, in pursuit of a New Deal for Higher Education. Annually, the legislative agenda will be revised to focus on issues that the US Congress and state legislatures will likely act on in the year ahead. The AAUP supports this agenda because ensuring higher education serves the common good requires first increasing student access, and from there tying in provisions that support faculty. Reversing the austerity funding model is the first step in the fight to ensure more full-time faculty lines.
1. Increased Annual Appropriations
2. College for All Act
Funded by a tax on Wall Street, this proposal would make college free. Tuition would be eliminated at all four-year public institutions through a federal-state partnership designed to reverse the historic trend of disinvestment. The original version of the bill would also greatly increase funding for public and private institutions as a tuition subsidy. On top of this framework to change the funding model for student aid, the bill includes additional provisions to promote shared governance and restrict the use of funds for capital projects and administrative incentives. Crucially, the latest version of the bill would require institutions to have 75 percent of courses taught by tenure-track faculty within five years and would create a pipeline to tenure-track or longer-term appointments for adjunct faculty.
3. Adjunct Faculty Loan Fairness Act
PSLF is designed to encourage graduates to pursue a career in public service by offering loan forgiveness after ten years of full-time work in government or the nonprofit sector. Under current law, a public service job is defined as full-time work, or a minimum weekly average of 30 hours per week as verified by the public service employer. It may be difficult or even impossible for contingent faculty (who work at multiple institutions) to meet the 30-hour minimum requirement, especially in states that under-report hours worked to avoid providing benefits. As such, these instructors, despite often working more than 30 hours, are effectively barred from participating in this program. Even if the Department of Education resolves some loan servicing issues (such as counting hours across employers correctly) that have hurt contingent faculty, the barrier of the 30-hour threshold remains in statute. The proposed bill would explicitly include part-time faculty in the loan forgiveness program, regardless of their reported hours worked.
4. PRO Act
For millions of workers, outdated state and federal labor laws can be an obstacle standing in the way of the fundamental right to join together and negotiate for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The proposal would go a long way toward restoring workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively by streamlining the process for forming a union, ensuring that new unions are able to negotiate a first collective bargaining agreement, and holding employers accountable when they violate workers’ rights.
5. Pell Grant Preservation and Expansion Act
The current structure of the Pell Grant program, funded mostly through discretionary spending in the unpredictable annual budget process, makes it difficult for it to keep pace with rising tuition costs and stay on strong financial footing. This proposal would double the Pell Grant award, index the award to inflation, and make other changes to expand the award for working students and families. The bill also makes the Pell Grant funding fully mandatory to protect it from funding shortfalls, expands the program to include DREAMers, and restores lifetime eligibility for the program to 18 semesters, among other changes that will reform the program to function as an entitlement like Social Security.
1. Student Debt Cancellation
Disinvestment in our institutions has led students to unjustly shoulder the burden of high tuition costs. The outstanding $1.8 trillion in student debt holds borrowers back from fully participating in our society; nearly a third of it is in default and is considered uncollectible. The pandemic-induced freeze on federal repayment will expire on January 31st, and many borrowers are unprepared to resume payments in a sluggish economy. Hand in hand with college affordability legislation and efforts to reform student loan servicing, President Biden can and should cancel all student debt through executive action.
2. Student Lending Reform
1. Education Gag Orders
2. Increased Annual Appropriations