In a sweeping decision issued on August 23, 2016, the National Labor Relations Board reversed its 2004 holding in Brown University1 that graduate students are not employees under the National Labor Relations Act. The Board ruled that graduate and undergraduate student assistants at Columbia University are employees who have the right to unionize, including those assistants engaged in research funded by external grants. The broadly worded decision has far-reaching ramifications for private sector universities because of its apparently intended wide-spread applicability.