A bastion of privilege?

In the past century, one of the stories that has defined our national character has been the expansion of higher education and its role as the vehicle of social and economic mobility for meritorious students of all backgrounds.

Policies—such as the GI Bill, the financial aid programs of the Higher Ed Act, and ongoing state support for public college and university systems—expressed the consensus that investing in higher education is good for everyone. These policies enabled a generation of students from working families to obtain a college education.

Over the past decade, however, the public policies that supported the American higher education system have eroded, and working families have had declining access to college as a result.

During this same time period, the dramatic effects of globalization have decimated employment in the highly unionized sectors that once provided an alternative pathway to economic mobility for those who did not or could not attend college. The consequence of these two trends is that in the United States, once a beacon of social and economic mobility to the world, there is now less economic mobility than there was 20 years ago.

At an Aug. 7 meeting of the AFL-CIO executive council in Chicago, AFT president and AFL-CIO vice president Edward J. McElroy spearheaded the adoption of a statement geared at reversing that trend. The statement commits the AFL-CIO, through its state federations, area labor federations and central labor councils, to set as a legislative priority restoring state support for higher education, keeping tuition down and supporting labor colleges at public universities. During the AFL-CIO discussion of the statement, McElroy noted that the quality of public higher education depends upon the equitable pay and treatment of its academic workforce. Thus, labor must work to reverse the trend of institutions over-relying on part-time/adjunct and contingent faculty.

Ensuring that our system of higher education is a vehicle of opportunity for all, not a bastion of privilege for the few, is a vital endeavor for our nation’s unions.