A literature professor teaches John Donne's infamous poem, "The Flea," each semester and asks his undergraduates, "How many of you find this argument to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh to be effective?" The unfortunate young ladies who raise their hands or their voices in affirmation thus find themselves on his radar for what he calls "a bracing game of cat and mouse between the male and female." As one of his colleagues observed about the habit of this libidinous professor, "Only an aging professor would use Donne as an opening line to get dates, but, unfortunately, only an emotionally needy, barely 20-year-old woman would fall for it."

I thought of that story (which is true, of course) when I read this Tweed post about a controversy in England in which an aging professor advised his colleagues to enjoy leering at students. "Look but not touch" is, simply put, advice that is both...

I ran across a recent comment by Alan Wolfe that gave me pause: "The academic world suffers from too many people trying to hire people too much like themselves."

While Wolfe was discussing ideological diversity, he really referred to one of the unfortunate tendencies that we have in academe: a relentless drive to retain comfort. Universities are, in many ways, the ultimate gated communities. A mentor once warned me of the ease with which searches can degenerate into a process of faculty members making copies of copies of copies of copies of themselves until departments become stale, tepid groups that are fearful of change. Such tendencies are not limited to faculty searches alone, but also to staff and, more dangerously, administrative searches. What he warned me about was not just people hiring newer versions of themselves as colleagues, but rather those who would hire slightly weaker...

In the discussion of a previous post about pressures on faculty members that led to grade inflation, a commentator mentioned that his/her home department at least subtly pressures faculty members to fail students, as many as 60 percent in one instance. I personally had an experience with such a department as an undergraduate, though the institution allowed students to drop a course or two the week before finals to prevent such grades from being posted to student transcripts.

Now that I'm an administrator, I see such drops as a perverse revenue producer: The students paid full price twice for one course's worth of credit. I do see, however, a certain value to such a strategy in that it allowed for high standards without punishing overall G.P.A.'s.

I am certain that such grade-deflation pressure is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it allows a more "realistic" grade distribution for...

On several occasions, my institutions have courted prospective faculty members over periods of several years before the timing was right for these people or for us institutionally. Almost without exception, though, the wait has been worthwhile. These folks have proven to be enthusiastic members of our communities.

Sometimes these folks were uncovered in a normal search process, but they weren't quite finished with their terminal degrees. Some were experienced scholars who couldn't navigate personal circumstances (e.g., they had children approaching high-school graduation, or aging parents needing assistance, etc.). In several of these cases, we were able to use visiting faculty members to bridge the time gap, allowing us to pursue our first choices. Patience, at times, is a golden resource.

The downside of this is that sometimes delays can occur that create long-term "holes" in departments...

A former colleague of mine once told me that when she taught at a for-profit institution, there was a policy where if a professor's grade distribution fell below a 3.0 average, she could be suspended from teaching for a semester (without pay!). To combat this, many faculty members showed movies in class (it was a brick-and-mortar institution) and did little substantial grading. The students moved along happily and the faculty members just lamented, "What are we supposed to do? We've got to earn a living."

Those of us in more traditional settings shouldn't feel too haughty about such a story, though. Many of us teach in states that require students to maintain a decent G.P.A. in order to retain their scholarships and grants (especially those derived from lotteries). A professor in Georgia once lamented to me how this played out at his institution; he said that almost every student who is...

Recently, I posted about the data that is contained in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and I'd like to visit one other issue related to rankings as a whole: their effects on the deliberations among search-committee members. Regardless of how we may feel about the validity of rankings, it is hard to ignore their effect on searches.

When I first started learning about academic searches as a doctoral student, a dean met with a group of us to look over résumés and talk about their contents. One particular résumé stood out in my mind because the dean made this observation: "Look at this guy's degrees: tier-one undergrad, tier-two master and doctorate. Now look at his institutional affiliations: tier-three for both of his experiences. If I'm looking at his résumé, I see him going down, not up. I don't see why I'd want to hire someone on that trajectory." This really opened my eyes to...

The advent of the fall semester means it's time for the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities. Certainly, there are controversies about rankings in general and the ways that the data can be interpreted, but I hope that job seekers know the wealth of information available within the rankings. Most libraries will have copies of the full report; the complete set of statistics is accessible for a fee (about $15), which includes a ton of helpful data for job seekers.

Beyond the first-tier through four-tier labels, there is information on finances, faculty profiles, student profiles, university services, alumni placements, and many other factors. This kind of information can help job seekers figure out if the college is really a good fit for their interests, how to shape the citation of teaching experiences in the CV and cover letter, and many other subtle...

This article about colleges and the increasing rate of lawsuits caught my eye. Last year I shared coffee with a visiting scholar from Europe who asked me many questions about the life of a dean in the United States. He asked specifically about the legal issues one faces in my position, noting that at his institution, each college dean has his or her own legal counsel who reviews almost every decision for liability.

Long before I became a dean, I had the unusual opportunity to complete a postdoc in higher-education administration that included extensive work in legal issues. I am frequently grateful for that training, but I also wonder how most administrators, including department chairs, gain such information. In fact, I wonder how many professors actually know about things like FERPA, ADA, and many other important legal issues. Has our society's litigious nature affected your campus?

I cracked up when I saw this cartoon because you would be amazed at how often fonts come up in search deliberations. Many years ago I saw with my own eyes a full professor put a CV in the reject pile while muttering, "That's a stupid font. Only an idiot would use that font in an application." I didn't see which font was verboten, but I have heard someone say, half seriously, that they would never hire someone who used "Garamond" for formal correspondence: "too pretentious." I'd hate to hear what those guys would say about "comic sans," "Edwardian script," or "gigi."

Obviously, there are professional parameters for business communications, especially in searches, but my point is really that there is a certain level of pettiness that can creep into the selection process, especially when applicants are very numerous. At previous institutions and in my professional network, I've heard no's ...

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a closed-door, small-group meeting of academic leaders with a lawyer who specializes in higher-education law. It was fascinating to hear the questions and the ensuing discussions. I'd never met with an attorney in a setting like that (the clock wasn't running on my personal dime!), and I learned a great deal about actions I need to take, especially in the hiring process, to head off misunderstandings and liabilities.

I try to keep up with as many of these issues as I can, but I am, after all, a layman. I wish that all administrators, and really all faculty members who serve on search committees, could experience such a meeting. The myths and legends surrounding these issues are, many times, far afield from the legal truth. Does your institution provide training on the legal aspects of searches and other personnel matters or does it simply trust ...