15 April 2022
President Biden, Dr. Biden, and Secretary Cardona:
The Executive Committee of Tenure for the Common Good, a national organization of tenured faculty advocating for adjunct and contingent faculty equity, writes to add our voice to a growing chorus of higher education unions and advocacy groups calling for you to forgive all federally held student loan debt. You have both the authority and public support to do so. Please use it.
We know you know the big picture numbers; as of the end of 2021, there is approximately $1.75 trillion in student loan debt, approximately 92% of which is federally held. We know you understand the consequences of struggling to repay that debt given your repeated extensions of the repayment moratorium. We are grateful for those, and hope you see the move to cancel them permanently as a short step from what you’ve already been doing, for the same reason you’ve been doing it. This debt is crushing people.
Among those people are college teachers. As you may know, approximately 70% of college courses in the United States are taught by faculty whose positions are adjunct or contingent, and whether part-time or full-time, they earn much less than tenure-track colleagues. According to a report from the American Federation of Teachers, about 64% of adjunct and contingent faculty earn less than $50,000/year, about half of those earning under $25,000/year (and that includes a sizable cadre teaching full-time). Twenty-five percent of the respondents to AFT’s 2019 survey of adjunct and contingent faculty reported applying for federal food or housing assistance, and we expect the pandemic has driven that number up. Many have no access to healthcare from their employers and thus have to pay for it from their low salary. Keep in mind, because the overwhelming majority of adjunct and contingent faculty have at least one graduate degree if not two (occasionally even more), their debt burden as individuals is significantly higher than the students they teach.
In short: you already recognize the burden student loan debt puts on students; we’re asking that you extend that recognition to non-tenure-track faculty – that is, to the majority of faculty who teach them. Rather than simply extending the repayment moratorium, make it permanent. Among the millions of people who would benefit from this decision are tens of thousands of college teachers whose situations are especially dire, and we ask you to act on their behalf.
Sincerely,
Tenure for the Common Good, Executive Committee Members
Dr. Carolyn Betensky, University of Rhode Island
Dr. Rachel Sagner Buurma, Swarthmore College
Dr. Seth Kahn, West Chester University of PA
Dr. Talia Schaffer, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center