Graduate students are striking for better wages and conditions as universities sit on huge cash reserves and student loans strangle the economy.
By Tyler Walicek, TruthOut
The U.S. university, imbued with the ethos of managerialism, has increasingly become a corporate enterprise in the guise of an intellectual steward. The infiltration of the priorities of capital into college administrations, underway since the onset of the neoliberal era, has incentivized forbidding tuition rates and the cultivation of a precarious workforce, subjecting many of those who perform the actual labor of the academic profession to intolerable strain.

Here are some facts, much remarked-upon, that nonetheless bear repeating: U.S. student debt has reached inconceivably vast proportions. Even advanced schooling is far from a guarantor of future financial security; for those aspiring scholars fortunate enough to find any employment at all, those prospects are overwhelmingly of becoming adjunct or contingent faculty — highly stressed and low-paid. Romanticized notions of academe belie the dim conditions endured by the bulk of actual academics. For most, tenure remains a dim hope.
Many graduate students find themselves caught between these multiple fronts: burdened with past student debt, earning sub-living-wage pay in their present work and facing dwindling future opportunities. Universities have grown over-reliant on graduate students and other contingent faculty to maintain a pool of low-cost labor. But an upswell of organizing activity in the last year indicates that graduate students have been emboldened to take a collective stand against the precarity and untenable conditions that mar the academic experience in the U.S.
Recent Posts
Trump’s Gaza Plan Has Already Done Its Damage
February 10, 2025
Take Action NowThe proposal to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians tapped into a deep undercurrent in Israeli society — endangering any chance for a…
A New Military-Industrial Complex Arises
February 10, 2025
Take Action NowA secret war is shaping up at the Pentagon.By Michael Klare, Tom DispatchLast April, in a move generating scant media…
Repression vs. Activism — Colleges Crack Down While Gaza Solidarity Persists
February 10, 2025
Take Action Now Students remain at the forefront of the struggle for a more just, less militarized, and truly democratic world.By Eric Ross Last…
American Security Contractors Walk A Thin Line In Gaza
February 7, 2025
Take Action NowFormer private soldiers say this new way of war — unofficial boots on the ground — could go sideways, while giving governments…