Associate Dean of Faculty for Institutional Research & Assessment Gordon Hewitt was interviewed for an article that recently appeared in The Scientist. The article, titled “University of Chicago Graduate Students Vote to Unionize,” referenced a study in which Hewitt looked at the influence of graduate student collective bargaining on student relationships with educators. The study was published in the Journal of Collective Negotiations in 2000.
As part of his study, Hewitt interviewed faculty at institutions where graduate student unions had existed for at least five years. He said the overwhelming response was that “the collective bargaining agreement didn’t affect the relationship at all because . . . they wouldn’t let a third party bureaucratic agent like a union come in between them and their students.” Hewitt noted that recent research by others has shown the same results.
Hewitt’s dissertation focused on graduate unions.
