One element of administrative careers rarely gets much press: the courtesy resignation. At private institutions in particular, when a new president comes on board, it is standard protocol for all senior officials to offer to resign from their positions during the first year of the new administration; on the academic side, this often extends all the way down to deans. This can apply to administrators who answer directly to newly appointed vice presidents and provosts as well; the ripple effect can be quite breathtaking. New executives have the right to build their own teams, and while wholesale acceptance of these resignations is uncommon, a carefully timed series of resignations is very likely. 

I've known of several courtesy resignations in which people were rewarded nicely for their actions, including several deans and provosts who returned to faculty positions with all or most of the...

Mark Bauerlein's Brainstorm post on the demise of tenure is burning up the Web; his warning that higher education is about to start winnowing out tenure in weaker programs is absolutely spot on in its truth, I'm afraid. Teaching-intensive institutions will face this reality very quickly over the coming decade.

Not long ago, however, I wrote a column about how faculty would be wise to pursue "portable" tenure, the tenure within one's profession that makes one marketable throughout a lifetime. As with many things in our age, we won't be able to place our faith in institutions for our care and success; the burden is going to be placed squarely on our shoulders. This will be difficult, but some kind of equilibrium will develop in the future. Full-time jobs with benefits will be more competitive, which will be brutal in many ways, but I am concerned not only with the realities of the...

I read a recent posting on hiring "tricks" by prospective employers that applicants should be aware of when they interview. One stuck out: "They Watch While You Wait," which warned folks that when they enter the interview space, including the outer office suites, they are being scrutinized from the first minute. The office dynamics described in the article don't fit most higher-education searches, but the interaction with the receptionist brought to mind an important point: The search committee is not the only group with whom applicants are interviewing. Search committees will often talk with trusted secretaries, student workers, and others in the work area to see what they thought of a candidate. I have been amazed at the rudeness of some candidates, especially toward secretarial and housekeeping staff. Collegiality doesn't just include faculty colleagues; it includes those underpaid an...

This week I've been reading How the Mighty Fall, by Jim Collins, based on the recommendation of my institution's president (who is a voracious reader). The book is a sobering study; everywhere I look, it seems, there are signs of decline in organizations and institutions. I was pondering other books I've read in the past few years and decided that the ones I recommend most highly to academic leaders in our current climate are Renovate Before You Innovate, by Sergio Zyman, and the recent classic novel Straight Man, by Richard Russo. What books might you recommend for academic leaders?

I remember hearing one of my doctoral professors lament that at the top conference in his narrow specialty area, it was common for a presentation to have fewer than a dozen persons in the room.

"I wonder sometimes," he said, "if it wouldn't be more effective to send copies of our papers to one another and just have a conference call."

Over the years, I've presented papers to packed halls, but those tend to be at large conferences that are subsidized by the ubiquitous job searches that coincide with the meetings. At other conferences, especially those within narrower disciplines, I've sat in many an all-but-empty conference room.

The changes in the job market will very likely affect the larger conferences; budget cuts, especially for travel, will significantly affect the smaller conferences. How should academe change the way conferences operate?

As if higher education needs another challenge, get ready for the next punch to the jaw: the swine flu.

Those of you who know your medieval history will remember the devastation suffered by universities during the various waves of the Black Death. Most institutions closed and many professors and students died; the contagion was particularly effective in the close quarters of their campuses.

Thankfully the swine flu has not been even remotely as deadly as the Black Death. We have better doctors, effective medicines, and, for goodness's sake, we wash our hands more frequently, but experts are watching for mutations that might make the current disease more threatening. Even without such mutations, we should get ready for lots of absences (including our own and our colleagues), lots of late assignments from students, lots of midterm withdrawals, and more than a few campus closings. The...

One of the most common complaints I see on faculty evaluations is that of office hours. Traditional students lament, "He's never there!" or "Her door is always closed!" I know for a fact that most of these faculty members are, in fact, there during mornings and early afternoons, it's just that these are the times when students are either in other classes or otherwise occupied. For faculty members, however, holding hours after three or four in the afternoon is neither practical nor realistic. Most faculty at my institution give out their home phone numbers or have started Facebook accounts or use our online platform to increase communication, but it's hard to accomplish some things in these media. I tell students with great frequency, "Make an appointment! Don't just pop in!" but they want spontaneity.

Do we all need to move into asynchronous online settings where office hours don't matter...

Over the years I've been shocked at the demands that some applicants have inserted in their cover letters. I've seen people with little higher education experience demand senior faculty rank, I've grimaced at salary expectations that were completely unrealistic, I've flinched at presumptions about outlandish teaching loads, and I've chuckled aloud at demands for benefits that would make a corporate executive flinch.

What strikes me about such demands is not really the boldness of the assertions but rather the depth of professional ignorance that was demonstrated. I suppose that each of us has stories about our own ignorance in a previous job search, but most of us have learned the ropes, at least through trial and error.

Here's what I'm wondering, though: How can we better educate folks about the realities, the proprieties, and even the basic terminologies of our profession?  What ...