One of the topics currently burning up administrative listservs is that of three-year, baccalaureate-degree programs. Legislatures are looking at using dual-enrollment programs (college courses offered in high schools), standardized testing, summer-school programs, and even the reduction of credit-hour totals necessary for degree completion to chop the traditional four-year degree program down to three years. The savings at taxpayer-funded institutions would be, it is supposed, significant; private institutions would have to adopt similar programs to stay competitive.

The merits of such plans are debatable, but since this site is dedicated to hiring issues, I should point out that this approach would have a significant impact on faculty jobs, especially in general-education programs. Every student credit hour generated off campus is a credit hour that is no longer taught...

It’s no secret that whom you know matters when it comes to finding a job, but it might surprise you to learn that the contents of a candidate’s Rolodex are increasingly a deciding factor in presidential hiring decisions. Dennis M. Barden, a senior vice president and director of the higher-education practice at Witt/Kieffer, explains why in his recent Moving Up column.

It’s “perfectly sensible” to regard a candidate’s connections as a major plus if they’ll help to further “the central mission of the institution and to the work of its faculty and students,” Barden writes:

For example, I once worked for a law-school dean who was widely connected to judges and journalists. The...

The Southern University Board of Supervisors voted not to renew the contract of the system’s president, which is set to expire on June 30, The Advocate, a newspaper in Baton Rouge, La., reported today.

The Board of Supervisors found the job performance of the president, Ralph Slaughter, satisfactory but nonetheless voted, 11 to 5, to terminate his contract. The board will meet in April to decide whether to place Mr. Slaughter on administrative leave until his contract expires.

Mr. Slaughter, who was named president in March 2006, filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the board in May 2007, asserting that the board had suspended him in retaliation for reporting that a former board member had sexually harassed several female...

Adelphi University has agreed to pay more than $300,000 to settle a federal gender-discrimination lawsuit, Newsday reported.

The lawsuit, filed almost two years ago on behalf of an education professor, Judith H. Cohen, said women on Adelphi’s faculty were paid less than men of the same rank.

The Long Island newspaper reported that Adelphi is to pay 37 women a total of $305,889, and give raises to 30 of them. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where Ms. Cohen originally filed a complaint in 2005, said the agreement also calls for mechanisms to be put in place to prevent further pay discrimination.

Adelphi, in a written statement, denied wrongdoing.

Many institutions are in the season where next year’s contracts are being sent out to current faculty members.

In most years, this is also the time when some faculty members will head to see their deans or provosts to negotiate for extra pay. Such conversations may be few and far between this year: When so many folks are losing their jobs or forgoing raises or even retirement contributions at other institutions, it’s hard to make a case for individual increases even at relatively stable institutions.

What advice might you offer faculty members who want to negotiate their salaries during this difficult economic season?

I’ve written here earlier that I thought my university was done with faculty hiring for the year. The economic uncertainty had led me to think that even if we had late retirements or resignations, we would hold off on filling those positions until next year, and wait and see what happens with enrollment and other budgetary factors before committing ourselves to a new round of faculty recruitment.

I was wrong. We’ve had a couple of late departures and those particular positions must be filled to accommodate student demand in the programs involved. So we’re once again collecting applications, getting ready for phone interviews, and planning for a small number of campus visits.

This is only a very, very small sliver of light at the end of the tunnel. But I am...

I detest Adjunct Teaching Awards, Term & Adjunct Teaching Awards, Distinguished Adjunct Teaching Awards, Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Teaching Awards, and Adjunct Excellence Teaching Awards.

Don’t misunderstand me. Non-tenure-track faculty members deserve to have their hard work, teaching skills, and outstanding abilities in the classroom recognized and rewarded. We just need to stop the ridiculous practice of teaching-award apartheid.

Across higher education, institutions have teaching-award programs for which only tenure-track and tenured professors may be nominated, and then there are the other teaching-award programs — for the other faculty members. You know, those other professors whose teaching jobs are so different from those of the tenured and tenure-track professors (eyeroll).

Here’s what I think: Adjuncts could compete for...

The University of California system is still hiring highly paid administrators and giving out big “pay raises, promotions, and perks” to higher-ups despite its financial struggles, much to some workers’ dismay, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Just last week, in fact, the university’s governing board hired “two executives at salaries of more than $350,000 a year and authorized paid administrative leaves to two former campus chancellors — one receiving $402,200 a year and the other $315,000,” the newspaper notes.

Over the last two months, it also upped the pay of a half-dozen senior administrators by as much as 22.3 percent and “approved higher salary ranges for several additional department-manager positions at UCSF and at...

Pay for midlevel administrative workers increased 3.5 percent this year, according to an annual report to be released this week by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

For the past two years, median raises for midlevel employees had outpaced inflation. In 2008, however, inflation jumped 3.8 percent, eating up the gains.

Top-level administrators fared slightly better, with median salary increases of 4 percent (The Chronicle, February 27).

Raises at private colleges were bigger than those at public institutions — a reversal of the previous year.

Midlevel employees at special-focus institutions — including medical and law schools — garnered a median raise of 3.9 percent, with public institutions paying slightly more than private...