Graduate workers are on the front lines in the battle over the neoliberalization of higher education. As both students and workers, they’re doubly targeted: at the same time states and university administrations are raising tuition and fees, they’re cutting wages and benefits and weakening job protections.

And the assault knows no boundaries. Despite genuine differences in legal, political, and institutional contexts — public versus private universities, states with collective bargaining for public employees versus those without it — graduate workers from the University of Missouri to the University of Chicago to the University of Wisconsin are on the receiving end of a similar offensive.

Despite their vulnerabilities, however, academics-in-training have very real power in the workplace. As the struggle over the last month at the University of Missouri shows, these attacks can provide ammunition for organizing campaigns that challenge the neoliberal university. Mizzou thought they could push through any cuts they wanted on their already impoverished graduate workforce. Instead, they got a walkout which has since turned into a unionization drive.