Higher Ed Unionization Boomed Under Biden. Will That Change Under Trump?

Higher education unionization surged under the Biden administration. Roughly 38 percent of graduate student workers are now unionized, as are more than a quarter of faculty, according to an August report from an organization that studies higher education labor trends. That National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions study noted that the ranks of union-represented grad workers especially grew in the past few years, increasing by 64,000 between 2021 and 2023. That was nearly triple the uptick over the previous eight years. And, according to National Labor Relations Board data released in October, the number of new undergraduate student unions representing housing and dining facility workers outpaced grad worker teaching and research assistant union formation since April 2023.