Every Grain of Sand: 2024 Changes to the Scope of Higher Education Unionization

In this research note, we supplement the findings presented in the National Center’s 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education. We aggregate and analyze data on changes in academic collective bargaining relationships for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate and undergraduate student employees in the year 2024. Our findings demonstrate that the growth in academic collective bargaining over the past decade that we documented in the 2024 Directory has continued. However, we find some significant contractions in faculty unionization through institutional closures and the revocation of bargaining units in the state of Florida. The research note closes with reflections on the implications of the changing federal legal landscape for the future of academic collective bargaining.