The ideal of shared academic governance underwrites the academic excellence of Illinois. We do not believe a graduate assistants' union would serve the best interests of our students or the university's academic mission. To retain our status as one of the nation's leading research and teaching universities, we must offer those who pursue graduate degrees here an environment that fosters learning and discovery. That means providing graduate students opportunity, flexibility, and a collegial atmosphere in which to work, as well as strong financial aid and benefit packages. In the past ten years, the minimum stipend has more than doubled.
Academic excellence is fragile.
Once built, it is difficult to sustain. We believe that involving faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, staff, trustees, advisory bodies and executive committees, deans, and administrators through shared governance is the most effective way to achieve our common goals. The effort to transplant an industrial, centralized, and adversarial model of decision-making into our academic culture puts that excellence at risk . In view of frequent questions and general interest in efforts by the GEO to form a bargaining unit of assistants, the University is posting at this site some of the key decisions and other legal documents on this issue. In that petition, the GEO sought a bargaining unit consisting of teaching assistants, graduate assistants and research assistants at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.