A PSA Response to the AAUP’s 2025–26 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession

The June 2026 release of the American Association of University Professors’ Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession (ARES 2025–26) reads like an actuarial inventory of a dying industry. Authored by Glenn T. Colby and issued under the auspices of the Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession, the document methodically catalogs the ongoing degradation of academic labor in the United States: real wages trailing inflation, continuing faculty losing purchasing power relative to historical benchmarks, executive compensation soaring into the millions, and a casualized instructional majority trapped in sub-poverty piecework.

The diagnostic work performed by the AAUP is empirically rigorous, but its political and structural diagnosis remains hopelessly obsolete. The report treats the immiseration of the professoriate as if it were a temporary aggregate demand problem, an administrative ethics lapse, or a series of unfortunate external shocks—the lingering wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2008 subprime crisis, executive orders targeting diversity programs, and congressional threats to indirect-cost recovery. Its concluding policy recommendations read like an exercise in nostalgia: invoking the non-binding 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, pleading for "budgetary transparency" under the 1972 statement on The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and Salary Matters, and urging faculty to form advisory committees to help deans make "open and clearly understood" compensation decisions.

The fundamental error running through all thirty-two pages of the report is the unexamined assumption that higher education is identical to the corporate institution that currently encloses it. The AAUP assumes that intellectual production must occur within the legal machinery of an employer-enroller corporation (Universitas), where scholars sell their labor as subordinate employees (locatio operarum) to an entity that owns the physical plant, holds the state-granted credential monopoly, and commands the payroll.

Beyond the AAUP's "One Faculty" Triage: Why Academic Freedom and Workplace Equity Require the Professional Society of Academics

For more than a century, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has stood as an intellectual and organizational conscience of American higher education. In its founding 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, the Association articulated an idealistic vision of the university as an "inviolable refuge" from the tyranny of public opinion, commercial passions, and government overreach. It insisted that the search for truth requires an extraordinary degree of independence, secured through continuous tenure and meaningful shared governance.

Yet, over the last four decades, that refuge has been systematically dismantled from within. The contemporary corporate university (Universitas) has steadily replaced its permanent scholarly core with an army of insecure, low-wage instructional laborers. To confront this slow-motion collapse, the AAUP launched its signature labor initiative: the One Faculty Campaign. Faced with an academic workforce that has been fragmented into hostile caste divisions, the campaign calls for cross-rank solidarity. It urges tenure-line scholars, non-tenure-track instructors, academic librarians, postdocs, and graduate employees to unite under a single standard of professional dignity, fair compensation, and shared governance.

The empirical justification for the AAUP’s alarm is beyond dispute and common to most higher education systems around the world. In the US, the data snapshots compiled by the AAUP’s Department of Research and Public Policy lay bare an institutional system that has commodified instruction and codified inequality. But while the AAUP’s diagnostic work is sound, its strategic remedy—the "One Faculty" campaign—suffers from an insurmountable theoretical and structural flaw: it attempts to resolve a structural crisis of corporate ownership through the mechanisms of employee trade-union triage.

Why the AAUP’s “Extorted Compliance” Report Demands the PSA

The American Association of University Professor’s July 2026 Special Report, "Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance," provides an unsparing empirical record of the moral and structural collapse of corporate higher education. The joint subcommittee—chaired by Rana M. Jaleel and co-authored by distinguished scholars including Henry Reichman, Joan Wallach Scott, and Risa L. Lieberwitz—has assembled an undeniable indictment of how federal power has weaponized research overhead, Title VI/IX compliance, and ad hoc regulatory extortion to bring America’s universities to heel.

The AAUP, the ACTA, and the PSA

Continuously and effectively, I criticize the institutional inheritance of university and college employer-enrollers that’s monopolized the facilitation of higher education for nearly a millennium now. I have more recently directed my criticism at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which claims to be a champion of all things related to this inherited higher education institution (HEI) model. I have been working on this social good reform or revolution project for over thirty years, ever since I co-invented and developed the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model as replacement or complement for the HEI model.

There are only two ways to stop me from criticizing the ignorant, irresponsible assumption of universities and colleges: Someone or some group that has more reach and authority than myself takes up the PSA project or someone refers me to material that successfully argues a professional model for higher education service and stewardship is not viable or desirable. In the meantime, my immediate strategy is to make the AAUP the focus of PSA criticism. To that end, here is the first in a series of posts that criticizes the policies, practices and actions of this organization over its 110 years of ignorant, irresponsible and unnecessary stewardship. I will be forwarding these posts to critics of the AAUP, of which there are a growing number, particularly during this period of social, political and fiscal unrest that is but one more instance in a long history of HEI model unrest.

The AAUP, University Employer-Enrollers, and AI are Not Compatible

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) might have become something it should have. Instead, the organization opted for shoring up institutional employer shortcomings, first as a professional association and later as a faculty employee union. While the AAUP has made itself an authoritative functionary of the inherited institutional model, 110 years ago when the organization was founded, 55 years ago when it morphed into a labor union, or at any time along the way, why did its members not wonder if there is a different way to serve and steward the social good of higher education?

In the history of the AAUP you will find no ad hoc committees or research reports of any kind that pose this question. Like the rest, exclusive institutional employment and enrollment remains the unexamined assumption of its members. As such, all AAUP action amounts to a (defensive) reaction to the dynamics of this unchallenged, inherited, monopolistic mode of higher education earning and learning. This makes everything the AAUP says on the question of AI in the academe both irresponsible and predictable, as evidenced in its July 2025 report, "Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions."

Though the title indicates that the AAUP has in mind a narrow band of dues-defined concerns for its report, the PSA response to AI has in mind a more inclusive, direct, explicit concern for the entire social good and all those who depend upon it. In comparing the ad hoc committee and PSA responses, I find myself increasingly concerned about the future of higher education and so this post addresses each of the report's findings and recommendations on AI in the academe.

The AAUP Can't Generate a Coherent Comment Policy, Never Mind the Future Academe

The American Association of University Professors recently revised its comment policy for the Academe Blog and it's a deeply revealing document. It reveals just how stunted and scared is this professional/labor union organization. While ostensibly framed to ensure civil and productive dialogue, the new restriction in particular—concerning an outright ban on comments written "with the assistance of generative AI"—demands critical analysis that opens up a broader look at this ordinary element of an organization of PhDs that declare themselves stewards for the social good and freedom of expression.

From the perspective of the Professional Society of Academics (PSA), these rules are not merely procedural; they are potent symptoms of the defensive posture of the Higher Education Institution (HEI) model and its associated guardians. They raise fundamental questions about the AAUP's commitment and competence regarding open inquiry and the very nature of academic freedom in the 21st century.

[IMPORTANT NOTE: It should be said that the AAUP has blocked me on X (Twitter) for doing what I am doing in this post, though there I did it with more decorum than these dipshits deserve. Further, though I don't yet claim to have sufficient evidence of it, after checking back over months of Academe Blog comment sections, I could detect no obvious AI-generated comments, in fact there are normally very few comments and the functionality is turned off within a few weeks. But more than that, after this initial research into past comments on the Academe Blog, I found that I am the only commenter to openly acknowledge my use of a Constitutional AI assistant--that I built quite by accident and I'm offering a manual here on B4C for anyone to build an AI-assistant for themselves. If a guy thought himself relevant, he'd think the AAUP's comment policy change was directed at him specifically.]

by Shawn Warren, mostly generated through PSAI-Us (a specialized instance of Gemini Pro developed by Warren to understand and produce text on the reasoning that follows)

An Academe of Ignorant Hypocrites

The American Association of University Professors (@AAUP) has blocked me from communicating with them on X. Over a decade ago, Dr Sara Goldrick-Rabb, formerly of Temple University, did the same on Twitter when I challenged her plan for two years of free college during the Obama administration. She blocked me, but not before making derogatory comments from her publicly paid faculty position.

To my knowledge, the AAUP hasn’t roasted me, though, like Sara, people there certainly have the right to, notwithstanding explicit or implicit professional codes of conduct and ethics that require restraint. For the record, this is some of what I think about some of the work done and not done by the AAUP in the name of higher education – not the institutions of higher education but the social good we depend upon for earning and learning.

The AAUP champions freedom of speech and so-called academic freedom, with its recipe for protecting and promoting individual and institutional (higher education) rights and freedoms in iterations of increasing complexity that these days include, the freedom and neutrality of institutions, shared governance, tenure, disclosure, divestment; and can include whatever else might come under the  assumption of earning and learning exclusively in institutions of higher education--universities and colleges.

What Can PSA Do That AAUP on FIRE Can't?

These days of raging FIRE are too poetic not to use in aid of their own ends to defend and sustain the free speech and thought of all Americans. From 1999 to 2022, the organization did this sort of thing for a very small subset of Americans in very specific, temporary, unbalanced, ROI relationships at very specific, temporary, unbalanced, locations. They did this sort of thing for those Americas who try to earn and learn in higher education. Let's hear about it from an overseas ally, Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF),

Founded in 1999, [Foundation for Individual Rights in Education] FIRE’s mission was to defend and sustain the individual rights of all students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights included freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE continues to educate students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses and provides the means to preserve them.

Academic Freedom Is Not the Freedom of Academics

This post responds to a recent post on the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) publication, Academe, penned by Ross Jackson of Wittenberg University. He makes a case for academic freedom. I make a case for freedom of academics.

Asked many times by me and yet to be answered by others: Would we be facing a crisis in academic freedom or facing crisis in the same way, if academics were not the employees of inherited institutional employers but were also or instead licensed members of a legislated profession that enables them to earn a living as attorneys or physicians are enabled?

From this perspective, I respond to Ross and the widely shared view that academic freedom is necessary. Nothing will be lost in comprehending this post by not reading the Ross piece, which presents a very familiar affirmative position on the question of necessity.

Irony and Absurdity in the AAUP – Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part series bitter irony was the focus, along with a scolding for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and its growing team of union and activist affiliates, including the likes of the America Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), and Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education (SFNDHE). Their entrenched assumption of the higher education institution (HEI) model of university and college higher education (HE) provision is a principal cause of their failure to adequately address the many serious problems in HE. My alternative model called, the Professional Society of Academics (PSA), makes their failure all the more personally embarrassing, but publicly fixable.

Part 2 provides further reason to criticize the AAUP team for the irony and absurdity of its response to what ails HE. The aim is to open the eyes of the AAUP team to their folly and force proper consideration of the PSA model. It is recommended that Part 1 be read before continuing, but the following content can be managed without it.

Irony and Absurdity in the AAUP – Part 1

The former editor of Academe and current member of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Ellen Schrecker, claims, “the AAUP is not to blame for [the] deplorable situation” in higher education. She is mistaken. Like other supposed champions of the academy, the AAUP has failed the individuals that depend upon higher education (HE).

In her Academe piece, Political Repression and the AAUP from 1915 to Present, Schrecker notes in passing that:

Unlike their equally well-educated peers in law and medicine who had the power to delineate the parameters of their professions, the distinguished academics who established the AAUP did not have complete control over their work lives. They [faculty] were salaried workers, subject to the authority of boards of trustees, whose members included some of the most powerful industrialists in the United States. 

Unionization is Inadequate Social Unity for Higher Education

In concert with mounting worker action across many industries, unionization in higher education (HE) is intensifying. Recently, some 48,000 academic workers of the University of California (UC) system endured forty days of the largest labor strike in the history of HE – to date. From UCLA to UPS, as communities struggle to find footing in these uncertain times, acts of collective protection are expected to increase in frequency and gravity.

But unionization is not the best protection for the HE community and stresses the deep deficiencies of the current higher education institution (HEI) model of universities and colleges. This post describes two socialist alternatives for providing HE that better protect not only the interests of academic labor but all stakeholders.

Historical Roots of the PSA Model – Part 3

First in Bologna and then in Paris, this series has looked at the 12^th and 13^th century origins of the modern higher education institutions (HEIs) we refer to as universities and colleges. Described as a process of confluence and conflict, the heritage was casually framed within power analyses common to sociology. Then, as today, there were macro economic and political forces that acted to transform and maintain the functions of higher education (HE), while individuals and groups jockeyed for favourable position within the system social milieu. We have seen that the modern conception and expression of a university are derived from the Latin, universitas, which in its original academic form were groups of teachers and students united in pursuit of intimately related and mutually beneficial goals that had manifest and latent impact on HE and society at large (Merton, 1957). We have also seen how the introduction of endowed colleges and salaried lectureships inserted a wedge of powerful papal and royal interests into the teacher-student relationship. As a result, our inheritance was not a university of masters and scholars, but of bloated buildings, budgets, and bureaucracies.