Part of the problem is the fact that many full-time members of what is supposed to be the teaching staff are spending more and more of their time on research, thereby dumping an increasing amount of the teaching work on graduate students. Some of the graduates do the same work that full-time teachers used to do, but for less money. In the end, though, unionizing may be less about pay than about the balance of power. Richard Freeman, who currently follows the subject at the London School of Economics, points out that students are often reluctant to deal as individuals with professors and administrators whose reports shape the rest of their careers. Unions, he believes, offer protection for students against potential professorial abuses such as sexual harassment and the stealing of credit for research work.
Some people reply that graduate students already have plenty of say in private universities.
As one lot of students goes out in the world, a new one takes its place to enjoy a union contract which lays down working hours, pay rises until the end of the 2002, a pension plan, holidays, no lockouts and, perhaps best of all, a system for dealing with grievances that includes the option of appeal to an independent arbitrator. It makes a pretty impressive package.