In this essay, the author explains how teaching assistant (TA) unions work to the benefit not only of the graduate students who are their members but also of the writing programs that employ them. While university administrations understand unions to be bothersome at best and forces of evil at their worst, unions are essential to the maintenance…

Ten graduate students in English attack their graduate (M.A. and Ph.D.) experiences which they consider to be narrow and demeaning. They point to intellectual, financial, and personal difficulties which beset them, as well as petty, unnecessary rigors and delays to which they are subjected and which often prolonged graduation. They speak of…