Over at Crooked Timber, Michael Bérubé describes how "extra extra dismal" this year's job market looks to be in modern languages. Why the extra "extra"? Well, because ...

the effects of the Great Collapse of 2008 are only hitting this part of the academic machinery now.  Colleges and universities have already taken—and administered—hits elsewhere, via salary cuts and/or freezes, furloughs, elimination of travel and research budgets, etc.  And I don’t know how many searches were cancelled last year after being advertised.  But I do know that in the modern languages, we might be looking at a 50 percent dropoff in jobs from last year, and there’s no federal stimulus coming to bail us out. ...

He goes on to explain that in recent years ...

the number of positions advertised in English has hovered around 1600-1700. This year, one of my students told me that she’d heard the number would be ...

According to a recent Chronicle article, 23 private university presidents took home more than $1-million last year, up from nine the previous year. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY, came in at no. 1, with a total annual compensation package of nearly $1.6-million.

Among the other top earners were:

• Steadman Upham, U. of Tulsa: $1,485,275

• Cornelius M. Kerwin, American U.: $1,419,339

• David J. Sargent, Suffolk U.: $1,496,593

• Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia U.: $1,380,035

Meanwhile, over at 11D, Laura McKenna is quick to point out the huge pay disparity between those university chiefs and the instructors who do a lot of unheralded teaching at their institutions:

The president of American University gets paid $1.4 million. Nearly 1/4 of American's teaching staff is comprised of adjuncts. They pay them $2,000 per semester.

Share your...

In these tough times, faculty and staff job openings may be fewer and far between, but the market for mental-health professionals may be heating up, as stressed-out students turn increasingly to campus counselors for help with problems big and small, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports in a recent article. Suzanne Boyll, counseling director at La Salle University, told the newspaper that "as of Oct. 16, the number of counseling sessions had spiked 48 percent to 204, up from 137 the same time last year." And counselors at other universities have reported a similar trend.

To meet the growing demand, some universities are hiring more counselors. Temple University, for example, has added three counselors over the last five years, "at a cost of about $250,000" while Ursinus College has added two, the Inquirer reports. Meanwhile, Lehigh University brought on two doctoral interns, and "St....

What do fallen university leaders and felines have in common? Apparently, they both land on their feet. One need look no further than James L. Oblinger, the ex-chancellor of North Carolina State who resigned over the Mary Easley hiring scandal, and Richard Herman, the ex-chancellor of the University of Illinois whose fall resulted from an admissions scandal. Both are finalists in the search for a new president of New Mexico State University, Lesboprof observes in her latest post.

She notes, however, that fallen female university chiefs may be less fortunate than their male counterparts: "While the boys may move laterally or even move up, looks like the women might have to take a little step down," she writes, citing the case of the controversial ex-president of the University of Colorado, Elizabeth Hoffman, as an example (Hoffman became the provost at Iowa State University after her...

• Faculty layoffs at the University of Maine system are likely, Chancellor Richard Pattenaude said this week, the Kennebec Journal reports. Meanwhile the president of Dartmouth College, Jim Yong-Kim, says he's also considering faculty job cuts, WCAX.com reports.

• "Is your administration using 'the economy' as an excuse to extort more work for less pay from an already overburdened faculty?," Marc Bousquet asks on the Brainstorm blog. Howard Bunsis, Eastern Michigan University accounting professor and American Association of University Professors treasurer, thinks so.

• In a recent op-ed in The News Tribune, Keith Hoeller, co-founder of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association, explains why Money magazine's recent ranking of college teaching as the third best job in the United States is way off the mark.

• Lesboprof describes the pros and cons of having extroverts as administrators...

• T. Alan Hurwitz, president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, will become the next chief of Gallaudet University, starting in January 2010, The Ticker reports. He succeeds Robert Davila, who is leaving in December. See an article in The Washington Post for details.

• Ex-Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, announced last week that he is stepping down as president of Des Moines University in order to explore the possibility of running for governor again, The Iowa Independent reports.

• Two ex-administrators at Chicago State University are suing the university for wrongful termination, The Ticker reports. One of the two -- Stephen "Seth" Hosick, the former human resources director -- claims he was sacked in July in retaliation for asking state officials to investigate the trustees' role in governance. See an article in The Chicago Tribune for details.

• According to ...

• It's official. The University of Illinois board of trustees has named ex-president Stanley Ikenberry as interim president of the three-campus system, the Chicago Tribune reports. Ikenberry, who led the university system from 1979 to 1995, will (re)take office on January 1.

• The longtime president of the Catholic University of America, the Very Rev. David M. O'Connell, has announced that he plans to vacate his post in August 2010, after more than a decade on the job, The Washington Post reports. See a university press release for details.

• Meanwhile, another longtime chief, Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis University, is resigning. Mr. Reinharz, who recently came under fire for suggesting that the university close the Rose Art Museum and sell part of its collection, will stay on until the end of the 2009-10 academic year or until a new president is hired, Bloomberg News reports....

Lesboprof says she's fed up with "artful dodgers" — senior straight white men who don't pitch in at faculty committee meetings and leave mundane tasks to their female colleagues — and she's putting them on notice.

No longer will she tolerate scenarios such as this one:

As we wrap up the first meeting of new committee to change the world, we start to review and assign the list of tasks we identified to complete before the next meeting. Of course, a few people step up to take on tasks, but those few are women. I suggest that one of the senior white men take on another task, which I swear to God was something as mundane as "ask someone for a document," and the Artful Dodger quickly passes it off to a junior white man. As a result, Dr. Dodger has no responsibilities as we walk away. I am irritated, because I realize that this happens in almost every damn meeting I attend outside my...

Princeton University's president, Shirley M. Tilghman, sent an e-mail message Tuesday warning staff members to expect layoffs this fall, thanks to a 22.7-percent drop in the university's endowment, The Daily Princetonian reports. The university depends on its endowment — which in June 2008 was valued at $16.3-billion, but is now valued at $12.6-billion — to help cover 48 percent of its daily operating expenses, the student newspaper notes. There's no word yet on which positions will be cut, but Ms. Tilghman told the newspaper that she hoped the 145 Princeton employees who opted to take the early-retirement package that the university began offering last spring will help to minimize the cuts.

Are you sick of your tax dollars going to institutions that value big-time athletics over their educational missions? So is Benjamin E. Rosenberg, a New York lawyer who argues in a recent op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor that the U.S. government should withhold federal funds from universities that pay athletics coaches more than professors. The purpose of a university education, he writes, is to ...

gain professional skills and to cultivate a love for learning–tools that will ultimately help carry us through life. In a world that has become increasingly dependent on technology, information, and clear communication, American universities cannot afford to falter on this.

And yet, schools are paying outrageous compensation to the coaches of their football and basketball teams, corrupting their mission.

Rosenberg notes that many universities with big-time football and basketball...