When it comes to the financial packages that graduate students receive to pursue their degrees, the devil is in the details.

A Chronicle survey, conducted this summer and fall, of the pay and benefits of teaching and research assistants at more than 100 research institutions reveals a dizzying array of variables that students must compare.

Some institutions cover 100 percent of graduate students’ tuition, while others waive only a portion. It is possible to get health insurance paid in full — 42 percent of the institutions that responded to the survey do just that — but coverage for family members is harder to come by.

Then there’s location: Just how far will a $19,000 stipend go in Los Angeles, anyway? When it comes to paying rent, buying food, and otherwise making ends meet, stipends do matter.

“A large part of my decision was based on how I would be able to afford to live,”...

Internal promotions have definite advantages, but there is one huge downside: Promoted faculty members often remain unreplaced for an extensive period of time. When the star economist is promoted to dean, she may continue to teach a few courses, but the courses that she used to teach are still on the schedule and they may not add up to a full-time faculty position. It’s a tough situation for everyone involved, especially if the “hole” in the teaching load continues for very long. It’s even worse when the promoted person’s home department doesn’t know about the promotion until it’s announced late in the year.

How can departments protect their faculty rosters while cultivating success for their administratively talented members?

Tenured professors are among the 127 faculty members being laid off by the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, The Daily News, a local newspaper, reports. In all, the medical school laid off more than 3,000 people, most of whom are staff members of the teaching hospital.

The Texas Faculty Association has protested the layoffs, which it says include the current and former presidents of the medical school’s faculty senate. The association says tenured and tenure-track faculty members were cut at twice the rate of nontenured faculty members.

The faculty group outlined its complaints in a blog posting. The faculty members receiving pink slips, effective at the end of the academic year, include well-known surgeons, experts in molecular medicine, and researchers who study infectious diseases, the Galveston newspaper reports. It received the...

Now that the University of California has a new rehiring policy in place, it will review hundreds of university employees who were rehired after they retired, sometimes for the same job but at higher pay, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The new policy comes in the wake of a controversy over UC-Berkeley Police Chief Victoria Harrison, who left with a lump sum $2.1-million retirement package only to be rehired for her old job at a higher salary, the newspaper reports.

According to a university data base reviewed by The San Francisco Chronicle …

There were 1,900 pensioners on the payrolls of the 10 campuses and the university’s headquarters last February. The review also found widespread violations of guidelines that limited retired workers to no more than one year of re-employment and generally no more than about 19 hours of work each week.

At least 440 pensioners...

In appointment news … Tristan Denley, chairman of the mathematics department at the University of Mississippi, will become the next provost of Austin Peay State University in January, The Tennessean reports. James L. Gaudino, dean of the College of Communication and Information at Kent State University, has been appointed president of Central Washington University, The Seattle Times reports. He’ll succeed Jerilyn S. McIntyre, who is retiring in January.

Meanwhile, in other news … The University of Denver has offered buyouts to 1,600 staff members and administrators so it can put more money toward financial aid, The Denver Post reports. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, California State University faculty members are seeing red over the big pay raises that went to top CSU administrators recently, despite the massive cutbacks facing many of the system’s campuses.