In the United States, higher education has been careening toward collapse as a result of state and federal disinvestment, institutional segregation, the erosion of academic labor, plutocratic governance, and the explosion of for-profit higher education that cynically leverages Americans’ lack of time and opportunity. As a result, public support for colleges and universities is eroding. We must fight back to win tuition free public college, dignified labor conditions, academic freedom, and debt cancellation.

Join us as we unpack these problems and their solutions (together with our partners at HELU) weekly in Spring 2026. We will welcome speakers who are experts in each of these problems, as well as those working towards policy solutions to them, including College for All, a federal bill that would make public colleges and universities tuition free.

This kickoff session will cover why we should care about free college at this moment and will provide more information about this series, which will continue through May 2026. We hope to see you there!

Speakers will include:

• Mark Huelsman, who is the Director of Policy & Advocacy at The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, where he focuses on federal policy efforts to modernize higher education and safety net policies to support students’ basic needs and improve college affordability. He also currently serves as a Senior Fellow with Protect Borrowers, a nonprofit organization fighting to build an economy where debt doesn’t limit opportunity. Mark’s writing and work have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Slate, Vox, Marketwatch, The Nation, The Guardian, Inside Higher Ed, the New Republic, The American Prospect, The Hill, and U.S. News and World Report. In 2016, he was named to Politico Magazine’s Politico 50 guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics for his role in sparking a national policy conversation around debt-free college.