 Gutman was awarded a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1959.His doctoral dissertation was on American labor during the Panic of 1873 and supervised by Howard K. Beale.During this time, Gutman worked with the eminent labor scholars Merrill Jensen, Merle Curti, and Selig Perlman, who had turned the University of Wisconsin–Madison into the cradle of modern American labor studies.