The conflict between the GEO and the university administration is about more than a living wage, more than furloughs, and more than tuition waivers. In fact, it’s about more than the entire contract. It is about dramatic and detrimental changes in higher education, and what they mean for undergraduate and graduate education alike.

The university’s overall revenues for 2009 rose by 7%. The amount of money dedicated to instruction increased only 0.8%. The budget of the Chief Information Officer, on the other hand, increased 10.9%. (“Other Administrative Units” went up 10.2% overall.) What do those numbers mean?

No longer an institution that seeks to provide actual, quality education, the University of Illinois has become a corporation whose sole purpose seems to be the production and sale–at higher and higher prices–of a mere image of education.

It seems to be no longer about teaching students but about paying administrators to create just enough illusion of teaching to get more money to pay more administrators to continue the illusion.

Faculty and graduate instructors across the university strive every day to help students learn, but it can often feel like we are struggling against the institution for which we work.

I regret what a strike could mean for undergraduates’ education this semester, but I loathe what the university’s policies mean for undergraduate education as a whole in the future.

That is why, if the GEO calls a strike, I will be on the picket line. I will be there to demand a better, fairer contract for graduate employees. But like many of my fellow graduate students and professors, I will also be there to draw attention to the university’s shifting priorities and their dire consequences for higher education in Illinois.

Derek Attig

graduate student