The governor of Oregon is expected to sign a bill that includes principles of the American Federation of Teachers’ Faculty and College Excellence campaign. The legislature approved the bill over the weekend, as the State Senate voted unanimously to make Oregon the first state to enact such a law.

The union’s national campaign, which began in early 2007, urges colleges to hire more full-time faculty members and to give part-timers health benefits and to adopt policies of “equal pay for equal work.”

Oregon’s bill would require colleges to document just who makes up the faculty — many adjuncts fall between the cracks when it comes to official data — and would give part-timers access to the state health-care plan.

Here’s the latest appointment news …

In other news …

The summer months can give chairs and deans night sweats, but it’s not from the heat. They are dealing with unsuccessful searches, last-minute retirements, and surprise resignations. This time of year is very active among administrators as they try to figure out how to fill positions when the calendar dictates that full searches may be impractical.

This season underscores two important elements about the search process:

Harvard University is feeling an unaccustomed pinch, as it tightens its belt another few notches in an effort to deal with its withering endowment, the Boston Globe reports. The university depends on its endowment — which last June was valued at $36.9-billion, but is expected to plummet more than 30 percent by the end of this month — to help cover about a third of its daily operating expenses, the newspaper notes. As a result, Harvard officials told the Globe, the world’s richest university can no longer afford to replace top scholars who retire or are poached by other universities, which has many professors fretting about the university’s academic standing and the impact on its students.

“Without replacing key faculty, Harvard will be unable to run graduate programs in certain specialties and risks damaging its academic reputation,” classics professor Mark Schiefsky told the...

The California State University system has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle an age-discrimination complaint involving an instructor at San Francisco State University who was passed over for a tenure-track job at age 61 in favor of a younger candidate without a doctorate, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced. The agency sued the university system on behalf of the instructor, Lawford Goddard, last year.

The university has denied that age discrimination was involved in the decision affecting Mr. Goddard, but it chose to settle as “a good business decision,” Susan Westover, a lawyer for the system, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The settlement, approved on Thursday by a federal judge, contains no admission of wrongdoing by the university. Under its terms, the university will grant Mr. Goddard emeritus status, which will give him the same benefits as a retired...

I recently saw an advertisement for a full-time lectureship in the humanities, Ph.D. required, at a flagship state university; the salary would be $32,000, plus benefits, to teach a 4-4 load, half in general education.

This advertisement has made the rounds in e-mails and discussions, and as some observers have noted, perhaps praise should be offered to the university for not farming out the work to underpaid/overworked adjuncts, but rather creating a bona fide full-time position. There are lots of folks out there who would love to have a job with a salary/benefits like that. On the other hand, what year is this? A salary of $32,000 is roughly what one would have earned for an entry-level position at a state university in 1989.

Obviously the law of supply and demand works here, but how can faculty leaders, especially those in the humanities, keep the current economic malaise from...

Salaries for most faculty and staff members at the University of California could be reduced by 8 percent through pay cuts, furloughs, or a combination of the two, under a proposal released on Wednesday by the university’s president, Mark G. Yudof.

The proposal, which was sent in a letter to university employees, seeks to use the salary cuts to cover about one-quarter of the university’s $800-million budget deficit over the next 12 months. Another quarter of the budget shortfall will be made up with increases in tuition, and the remaining half will need to come from budget cuts on the system’s 10 campuses, Mr. Yudof wrote.

The options to achieve the salary savings include 21 days of unpaid furloughs or an 8-percent pay cut for all employees making more than $46,000 per year, Mr. Yudof wrote. A final proposal will be presented to the system’s Board of Regents in mid-July for possible...

Many job advertisements assert that the salary offered (and, often, the benefits package) will be “competitive.” While I confess that some of the institutions where I’ve worked use that very language, I remain unimpressed by it.

First of all, it’s hopelessly vague to say a salary is “competitive.” No college or university is going to say in a job ad that its salary is “uncompetitive,” but the term “competitive” is a deeply relative term both from institution to institution and from person to person. For instance, my institution’s salaries are very competitive with those of the other small colleges and universities in Iowa (actually, we’re easily in the top three or four among similar institutions in the state), and our benefits are much better than average in that group as well. But, nationally, our salaries and those of our regional peers are quite low.

However, you can buy a nice ...

Unlike many states, Tennessee is reserving more than $300-million of its education stimulus money from the federal government to fill gaps in the 2011 budget year when its economy may still be flagging.

So where does that leave the University of Tennessee system in 2012, when the stimulus money runs out? For starters, the university has already identified 300 staff positions that it plans to cut and 200 more that will remain unfilled, according to a news release from the system.

In addition, the jobs of two vice presidents are being cut immediately and the title of vice president will eventually be dropped from five other positions, Jan Simek, the system’s acting president, told the university’s Board of Trustees.

“At the end of this period, UT will be a different university than it is now,” Mr. Simek was quoted as saying in the news release. “We will be leaner and more efficient.”...

The former provost of North Carolina State University who resigned last month as controversy grew over the hiring of a former governor’s wife won’t get to keep enhanced pay that was added to his severance package by a chancellor who has also resigned, the Associated Press reported.

The university’s new interim chancellor, James H. Woodward, said in a letter released today that the deal was “invalid.” According to the campus newspaper, The Technician, the letter was dated June 11 and addressed to the former provost, Larry A. Nielsen.

The salary enhancements were arranged by the former chancellor, James L. Oblinger, one day before Mr. Nielsen stepped down. But in the letter, Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Oblinger did not have legal authority to change the former provost’s 2005 employment agreement. Mr. Nielsen instead will receive the severence package dictated in his original contract....