2024 AAUP Updates

As an apparent reaction to student protests since last October, a number of college and university administrations have hastily enacted overly restrictive policies dealing with the rights to assemble and protest on campus. These policies, which go beyond reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression.

AAUP president Todd Wolfson sent a letter to University of California president Michael Drake urging the administration to settle a fair contract with UC system librarians represented by University Council-AFT (UC-AFT), unit 17.

The AAUP has released a new Statement on Academic Boycotts, which reconsiders the AAUP's prior categorical opposition to academic boycotts set forth in the 2006 report On Academic Boycotts. The AAUP's revised policy maintains that academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom and can instead be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.

The ascension of J. D. Vance to the Republican presidential ticket has brought the decades-long battle to define the future of American higher education to a tipping point. With Vance, American Far-Right authoritarians have succeeded in elevating a fascist who vows to “aggressively attack universities in this country” to within striking distance of their goal: the annihilation of American higher education as we know it. All those who care about higher education, academic freedom, and the future of democracy should prepare for the fight ahead by organizing their campus communities.

New analysis identifies areas where the Department of Education’s final Title IX regulations advance equity goals and where they fall short.

The AAUP has joined 227 organizations signing onto a letter urging the US Department of Education to release its hardship proposal on student debt relief in order to ease the financial burdens faced by student borrows and their families. The Department of Education's Notice of Proposed Rulemarking would provide student debt relief to student loan borrowers experiencing hardship and provide an outline for the Biden administration to continue its mission of student debt relief nationwide.

The AAUP has joined other education organizations in endorsing the bicameral Pell Grant Preservation and Expansion Act of 2024, which would nearly double the maximum amount afforded to recipients and ensure greater access to higher ed for working families and students.

The report describes key institutional finance trends in US higher education and documents the ongoing shift in the makeup of the academic workforce from mostly full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members to mostly faculty members holding contingent appointments that are ineligible for tenure. 

Key findings on compensation include the following. From fall 2022 to fall 2023, nominal average salaries for full-time faculty members increased 3.8 percent for all academic ranks combined. However, real average salaries for full-time faculty members are nowhere near prepandemic levels. Economic conditions remain dire for part-time faculty members, who make up just under half (48.7 percent) of the academic workforce. In 2022–23, part-time faculty members earned an average of $3,903 per three-credit course section.