The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) unveiled a sweeping joint policy platform Monday, calling on candidates in the 2026 midterm elections to embrace higher education as a public good and push back against what the unions describe as the Trump administration’s systematic dismantling of America’s college and university system.
Released in Austin, Texas, the platform, A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education, lays out an ambitious agenda organized around four main pillars: students’ right to learn, affordability and accessibility, community investment, and labor protections for academic workers. Together, the AAUP and the AFT represent roughly 400,000 higher education members, with the AFT’s broader membership totaling 1.8 million.
The document paints a grim picture of the current state of higher education. Federal and state funding cuts have left institutions — particularly community colleges and regional public universities — struggling to meet their missions, the platform argues, while faculty increasingly work in precarious, contingent positions. Meanwhile, students collectively carry more than $1.7 trillion in loan debt.
AFT President Randi Weingarten placed the blame squarely on the current administration. “Instead of investing in the next generation, the federal government is stripping hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants, attacking diversity, saddling millions of borrowers with student debt and abolishing minority-serving institutions,” she said, calling it “a cynical attempt to punish political enemies and control knowledge.”
AAUP President Todd Wolfson framed the effort in broader democratic terms. “By centering the needs of workers and students over billionaire and corporate interests, we are building a movement to transform campuses back into engines of public progress that center free inquiry, innovation and public knowledge, and cultivate the informed citizens that are essential for a functional democratic society,” he said.
Among the platform’s more concrete proposals: making public higher education free and all higher education debt-free through renewed public investment; expanding Pell Grants indexed to inflation; ensuring full and equitable funding for historically Black colleges, tribal colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions and other minority-serving schools; and establishing AI guardrails to protect academic workers and students.
On the labor front, the unions are calling for an end to the overreliance on low-wage contingent faculty positions, expanded collective bargaining rights at both public and private institutions, and the overturning of the Supreme Court’s NLRB v. Yeshiva decision, which has long restricted faculty unionization at private universities. The platform also calls for true shared governance — meaning faculty and staff, not administrators or political appointees, hold real decision-making authority over curriculum and institutional priorities.
The unions are asking candidates at every level of government to formally adopt the platform, framing the 2026 midterms as a critical inflection point. Their advocacy, they say, will span community organizing, congressional lobbying, litigation, and public pressure campaigns.
Whether the platform gains traction with candidates beyond the unions’ existing base remains to be seen. But with federal research funding under threat and campus politics increasingly volatile, the AAUP and AFT are betting that higher education can become a galvanizing issue at the ballot box.
