Higher Education division members go behind the scenes of Real Solutions campaigns

On July 17, the AFT launched Real Solutions for Higher Education, a multiyear campaign to ensure higher education truly serves students and communities and to reclaim higher education as a public good. Today, at the AFT convention, more than 100 members of AFT’s Higher Education division gathered to receive advice and tools from union leaders for implementing Real Solutions campaigns in their locals.

In a discussion of campaigns implemented in New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Michigan, panelists described challenges and strategies for navigating them. For Fred Kowal, president of United University Professions, the campaign to save SUNY Downstate, a teaching hospital in Central Brooklyn, was challenged in communicating how the hospital’s closure would impact the wider community. Kowal found that locals need a simple, powerful message and a coalition of allies and community partners to engage in action.

Jeffrey Ogbar, 2022-2024 president of the University of Connecticut chapter of AAUP, shared their campaign to narrow a funding gap caused by 15 years of austerity management; they were challenged by an inaccurate public perception that UConn is well funded. One strategy that is working well is engaging allies across the university system and the larger community in communicating about the campaign to the public and legislators through rallies and letter writing.

Underfunding is central to the University Professionals of Illinois campaign as well, said president John Miller. They are laying the groundwork for a new funding formula for the state and a significant investment in higher education. Their most significant challenge has been getting members to see what’s possible. Miller advocates focusing on smaller, incremental wins to gain momentum for larger wins and to give all members the opportunity to help.

Eric Rader, president of Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers, emphasized the need to involve members and the community in these campaigns. To win voter approval of critical operating millages in Dearborn, Mich., the union got out the message through town hall meetings and building coalitions with other unions, the college administration and community partners.

Panelists’ advice for locals starting their own Real Solutions campaigns on these and other issues connected to the national campaign pillars—affordability, access for all and academic freedom—were to be relentless, plan carefully and remember that unions are fighting for the good of all.

For more information on the Real Solutions for Higher Education campaign and dozens of resources to help locals model contract language, policy guidance, communications and more, visit aft.org/realsolutionsforhighered.

[Lesley Gonzalez/photos by Suzannah Hoover]