Back in 2020, higher education faced multiple challenges—including student debt, administrative bloat, and the spread of contingency (also known as adjunct labor) in faculty hiring. Five years later, the challenges facing higher education are as significant but different. They include a spate of police actions on campuses, anti-DEI and anti-tenure legislation, academic freedom lawsuits, weaponization of accreditation, and political tests for everything from curriculum to top institutional leadership.
At the same time, there are also emergent opportunities—the product of intensified union organizing, encampments, more strikes, more wins, and better contracts.
Driving some of this forward movement is a new coalition, Higher Ed Labor United, better known as HELU.
