Can a New Deal Restore Higher Education?

Scholars and experts have argued for years that our system of higher education is in desperate need of reform. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on exactly how frail that system has become. Only comprehensive restructuring and reinvestment can salvage our struggling institutions.

Below you will find some of the best thinking about our shared challenges and proposed solutions. Check back often for updates to this page.

Campaign Partners:

• American Association of University Professors
• American Federation of Teachers 
• The Roosevelt Institute
• Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education

Articles: 

• Restoring the People’s Universities, Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis, Academe
• A New Deal for College Teachers and Teaching, Mia McIver and Trevor Griffey, Academe
• The Miseducation of the Indebted Student, Jason Thomas Wozniak, Academe
• Reclaiming Paul Robeson in the Time of COVID-19, Donna Murch and Todd Wolfson, Academe
• Imagining a New Deal for Higher Education, Lisa Levenstein and Jennifer Mittelstadt, Academe
• A True New Deal for Higher Education: How a Stimulus for Higher Ed Can Advance Progressive Policy Goals, Suzanne Kahn, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and Lisa Levenstein, Roosevelt Institute
• The Edge: How Higher Ed Can Help Repair Our Democracy, Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education
• A Marshall Plan for Rebuilding Higher Education, Jeffrey Sommers, Mark Blyth, James Galbraith, and Luz Sosa, Academe
• For a Reparative University, Michael Meranze, Academe
• A Higher Ed Agenda for the Common Good, Liz Perlman, Forge
• Questions for Kevin Carey about his proposal for a broad restructuring of higher education, Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed
• How to Save Higher Education, Kevin Carey, Washington Monthly
• On Becoming an Anti-Racist University, Black Engineering
• We Need an Academic New Deal, Alyssa Bowen and William Horne, Nation
• The Pandemic is the Time to Resurrect the Public University, Corey Robin, The New Yorker
• Beyond the Neoliberal University, Todd Wolfson and Astra Taylor, Boston Review
• Only Free College Can Save Us From This Crisis, Christopher Newfield, Chronicle of Higher Education
• A Progressive Framework for Free College, Suzanne Kahn, Roosevelt Institute
• Canceling Student Loan Debt Doesn’t Make Problems Disappear, Kevin Carey, The New York Times