AAUP and AFT Launch National Higher Education Platform Ahead of 2026 Midterms

AUSTIN, Texas-Today, the American Association of University Professors and the AFT jointly launched a new comprehensive national policy platform ahead of the 2026 midterms to counter the Trump administration's attacks on higher education and secure a vibrant future for America's public colleges and universities. The new framework, "A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education," champions a vision where colleges and universities, rather than corporate entities, are treated as an indispensable public good crucial for a functioning democracy.

Key pillars of the platform include:

• Restored funding: A sustained reinvestment in public higher education to ensure college degrees are accessible and can be earned debt-free.
• Freedom to learn: New safeguards for academic freedom, shielding researchers and faculty from political interference and ideological thought-policing.
• Shared governance: Ensuring faculty and staff-not corporate administrators-make final decisions on curriculum, research priorities and institutional priorities.
• Labor reform: Ending the reliance on low-wage contingent labor and providing collective bargaining rights for all faculty and staff at public institutions.

The AAUP and the AFT are calling on local, state and federal candidates and elected officials to run on this platform and commit to making higher education a central issue at the ballot box. The AAUP is affiliated with the 1.8 million-member AFT.

"With this platform, the AAUP and AFT have crystallized the fight for higher education as a fight for the soul of our democracy," said AAUP President Todd Wolfson. "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."

"America's colleges and universities are the envy of the world," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "They drive economic growth, create new knowledge and expand opportunity for students seeking to build a better life for themselves and their families. But 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-all in a cynical attempt to punish political enemies and control knowledge."

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, the AFT and the AAUP's 400,000 higher education members are calling on candidates up and down the ballot to adopt the platform and embrace the idea of higher education as public good.

The unions are advocating in the community, in Congress, in the courts and in the court of public opinion for a major shift in how the nation values its academic institutions. The shared vision concludes with a call to action:

"Together, the AAUP and the AFT are fighting to make higher education the public good it should be: affordable and accessible, not a privilege for the wealthy; a central hub for world-leading research; a driver of a vibrant democracy. This platform outlines a path forward to strengthen higher education by defending it from political capture, restoring public investment, respecting labor and recentering student learning so that students receive the education they deserve."

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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.