by Thomas Gokey, Organizer for Debt Collective, a HELU member labor organization, and active with the HELU Policy
and Politics Committee
HELU’s basic idea of centering the hoped-for transformation of the higher ed sector around labor means confronting opposition on multiple levels. One level is obviously collective bargaining, where unions bargain with employers. Another level is the political, specifically legislative level, where workers fight to get collective bargaining laws passed and lobby, educate and influence elected representatives at the state and national level. A third is the level of public consciousness and culture.
Three of the current Politics and Policy Committee projects are organically connected around all three of these. These are the Rebuilding American Higher Education paper (Dec 2025) from the Jain Family Institute, referred to as the “White Paper”; the current version of the Sanders College for All (C4A) bill which is presently in the Senate; and the Candidate Questionnaire that is being used to educate and stir up the thinking of people running for elected office.
The JFI “White Paper”
The JFI White Paper may only have a narrow audience of policy wonks. The first twenty pages of it are the economic argument, about free tuition and why it’s ultimately less costly to a society. However, it is important for HELU member organizations to know that it exists and is out there.
Behind the economic argument, the two co-authors, economist Marshall Steinbaum and Andrew Elrod, tried to visualize the concrete details of fundamental aspects of a transformed higher education system. Drawing from history and from the experience of other countries, they propose a system that is horizontally/ geographically laid out rather than hierarchically in a prestige pyramid. It is fully unionized wall-to-wall and with only two, rather than a couple of dozen tiers of faculty employment. It is a national system, with the institutions directly funded from the national government.
Right now, the HELU vision statement and even our federal policy document propose only ideals. Steinbaum and Elrod wanted to see what a fully realized example of the HELU vision statement might look like. Of course, there are further levels of detail that will develop as we come closer to a possible future. But right now, in 2026, as fifty years of “a thousand cuts” have weakened higher ed so that recent frontal attacks have made it unrecognizable, HELU wanted to have a piece ready that we can point to and say, this is what we mean.
One of the comparisons we made was with the UK, where there is a big debate right now about student debt. It’s become something that everyone is talking about. About a decade ago the UK dramatically changed their system to become more like the US. They charged tuition and then came up with a complicated payments plan that people can’t afford. But if you can’t afford the payments, they get cancelled. People are saying, “We are burying students in debt and then it gets cancelled – in the meantime, they are ruining their life.” They did a study of whether this made economic sense. In the UK it’s one national system so were able to do a national study They found out that getting students to pay tuition did not save money, it was more expensive. In the case of the US, of the 2 trillion of student debt that is out there, most of it will get cancelled, in one form or another. It will either get cancelled because they are a public worker or they are stuck in the payments system 20 years until they get so old they are on disability, and it gets cancelled, or they die. In the meantime, it will destroy people’s lives for decades. These days, people are not paying their debt, they age into their debt.
College for All
College for All (C4A) is the Senate version of the bill that was introduced by Bernie Sanders when he ran for President in 2016.It has since been modified somewhat and introduced in multiple Congresses, including 2025. The real thing that Debt Collective finds a problem with is that it is means-tested. This means it will not be as popular or robust because it starts from a compromised position. However, the means test still includes almost everyone. It excludes people whose parents have a combined adjusted gross income of under $300,000. You’d have to make $400,000 in order to pay tuition. That creates a reason not to apply; if you don’t apply, you don’t have to prove income. This means-tested thing helped destroy Biden’s students debt forgiveness plan. C4A has some support but not enough. We need to get local ujnions like HELU members to understand what C4A actually is, so they can lobby their local representatives and educate them.
The Candidate Questionnaire
The candidate questionnaire is a good tool for a conversation. We are their first impression. That’s extremely valuable. For many people running for office, or even elected people, this is their first encounter with higher ed. They need to be shown what the alternatives are. We can say to them, you might not know what you think about this issue right now, but here is why that issue is important, what do you think? We also ask people to fill out the answers to the question. Probably people won’t fill it out. Nevertheless, a lot of value to using it because it is education. Of course it would be great to have people fill it out.
Each member union has its own process for endorsing. We need to get it out to HELU unions. Take time to read it, have a discussion. Nothing is easy or quick. It’s designed to be flexible. If there is a local issue that someone wants added to the questionnaire – the member union can make a customized version for that local. So far, it has been used at a Town Hall in Michigan and I have used it to talk to candidates in the district in upper New York state where I live.
I am an organizer with the Debt College. I was once an adjunct at Syracuse and a few other places. What the Debt Collective can offer HELU is a debt analysis with a bunch of institutions – we just saw Hampshire College close mainly because of debt and recent news reports say perhaps four hundred other colleges will close this year. The Debt Collective is doing a political series on College For All and one of the sessions was dedicated to Marshal Steinbaum and Andrew Elrod’s white paper. The link to the series is here: https://debtcollective.org/what-we-do/jubilee-school/courses/. This is a good place for ordinary people to ask question. We’re in the middle of that series. This series is a good place for people to join in and ask questions.