Idaho's State Board of Education is trying to reverse an antinepotism law that bars the state's public universities from hiring presidential spouses, the Associated Press reports. Board members worry that the law will make it tougher for Idaho's public universities to recruit and retain top leaders, many of whom have spouses in academe.

A case in point: Laura Vailas, a Ph.D. nutritionist married to the president of Idaho State University, Arthur Vailas, recently had to forgo applying for an $85,000 post at the university, lest she find herself in violation of the law, Mark Browning, a spokesman for the board, told Idaho lawmakers. Browning also pointed out that academic job opportunities for presidential spouses at nearby institutions are pretty scant thanks to the remote location of Idaho's public four-year universities. And according to the AP, the Idaho law is stricter than similar...

In a recent post, FemaleScienceProfessor recounts the "legend" of a friend whose job candidacy was inadvertently doomed by an adviser's complimentary letter of recommendation and the pettiness of a search-committee member who read it, or so the story goes:

Years ago, a friend of mine had a highly unsuccessful interview for a faculty position. According to the legend, the department chair, who had had the same adviser as the candidate, was upset that their mutual adviser had written in the reference letter that the candidate was THE BEST graduate student he had ever advised. This was humiliating for the not-best professor, and he did not support hiring the candidate.

While FSP concedes that there's no shortage of petty people in (and out of) academe, she thinks it's improbable that her friend's candidacy was sabotaged by one:

Perhaps I am naïve, but I don't believe that the wounded ego...

An article in yesterday's Chronicle notes that there's still a lot of inequity when it comes to household chores, according to a study from the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender and Research, at Stanford University. The study, "Housework Is an Academic Issue," found that female scientists shoulder "54 percent" of "core household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry—about twice as much as their male counterparts," while still working "at their paying jobs about 56 hours a week, almost the same number of hours as men do."

They are hardly alone. Many working women "do a disproportionate amount of housework," says Jennifer Sheridan, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute.

That's hardly a revelation. For the scientists, though, "more housework doesn't affect the quality of work but its quantity, which could make a...

It's no surprise that Thomas H. Benton's column on why you shouldn't go to grad school is one of the most popular articles on The Chronicle's Web site these days, what with the bottom dropping out of the humanities job market and all. Now, via The Boston Globe's Braniac blog, comes one more reason to think twice about getting a doctoral degree: According to the economics blogger Mike Mandel, the real earnings of full-time workers who hold a Ph.D. have sunk by 10 percent since 1999 (see chart below).

According to a recent New York Times article, full-time professors are a dying breed:

In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. 

I am Jack's total lack of surprise (that's a Fight Club reference, for those in the know). And thanks to the recession, a humanities doctoral grad probably has a better shot of winning American Idol than of landing a tenure-track job. (Doubters need look no further than the abysmal job numbers recently released by the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association.) Yet historian was in fifth place on CareerCast.com's new rankings of 200 jobs,...

• Edward A. Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, announced last week that he will resign next year after nine years on the job, the Chicago Tribune reports. Coincidentally, Snyder's announcement comes only about a week after The Harvard Crimson reported that Dean Jay O. Light of the Harvard Business School said he would vacate his post in June. Meanwhile, as the Tribune article notes, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management is also still searching for a new dean.

• Radford University's embattled provost, Wil Stanton, who endured a no-confidence vote by the faculty senate in October, will step down on December 31 to return to the faculty, The Roanoke Times reports.

• Ryan C. Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, will become dean of Texas A&M University’s George Bush School of Government and...

Over at Reassigned Time, Dr. Crazy responds to a poster who commented on her previous blog item about tenure and the adjunctification of academe. She shares some additional thoughts about academic employment and explains why, despite the problems associated with tenure, she'd be loath to remain in academe without it.

It's not "because I've now got tenure -- I felt the same way before I had a tenure-track job," but because an academic's contributions are shaped by the conditions of his/her employment, she writes.

She describes, for example, how her research agenda was affected by the fact that she didn't have "a stable position until this year":

I did not need a book for tenure. What I needed was a couple of journal articles and a number of conference presentations. And so, that was where all of my "new" research energy was focused. Now, did those articles contribute to my field? I...

• In the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Zuska explains why all you faculty scientists out there should give thanks to science administrators, who have to deal with this kind of stuff regularly so that you don't have to.

• The City University of New York's plan to raise its profile in the sciences by luring nationally recognized scientists in emerging disciplines and building new science buildings on several campuses is coming to fruition, The New York Times reports.

• According to an annual report released this week by the U.S. Education Department, one-third of college employees are part-timers, The Ticker reports.

• According to an article by Richard Evans on KeepCaliforniasPromise.org, a Web site of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, University of California faculty members may soon have their own personal senior administrator (hat tip: Edge of the American West)...

Need a good chuckle? Then check out Grad Hacker, a blog about how to act productive, because "simply being productive is not enough" (especially these days when so many people are being laid off). "What good is your inner, clandestine productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are?," writes GH, an anonymous graduate student. Be sure to read his/her latest tip: "Set Your Chat Status to Busy but Don't Sign Off."

Meanwhile, over at Feminist Law Professors, Bridget Crawford offers a "version for law profs." Here's a sample:

• Tip #1:  Walk fast when on campus and explain to colleagues that you cannot go out to lunch because you are busy responding to law review editors’ comments on your manuscript.
• Tip #2:  Remind your colleagues how many students you teach...

Hundreds of students at the University of Maryland at College Park marched on the administration building last Thursday to protest the dismissal of Cordell Black, a popular diversity officer who has occupied his post for 18 years, The Washington Post reports.

Mr. Black will be let go as associate provost for equity and diversity at the end of the year as part of a university effort to cut costs. The university plans to fill the position with a part-time administrator. However, Mr. Black, as a tenured professor, may remain on the faculty, the newspaper reports.

The Post described the demonstration as "one of the largest demonstrations at the College Park campus since the Vietnam War era." According to the newspaper ...

The mood during the demonstration suggested that many students fear that the school is quietly retreating from its commitment to racial and cultural diversity in a...