In a recent post, Tenured Radical discusses an essay by Sterling Fluharty at his blog, PhDinHistory. The two posts make for a worthwhile exchange between two savvy commentators on the academic job market.

The gist of it has to do with how we — academics as a whole — can rethink our approach to the job market given the apparently permanent (and worsening) fiscal problems facing higher education. Fluharty, especially, takes up the question of academic elitism in the creation of the current and future market for history professors, an issue that interests me broadly in terms of faculty aspirations, institutional types, and the way graduate students are prepared for the market.

Some commentators foretell the doom of the traditional university, and the kind of liberal-arts education that goes with it, with the possible exception of the richest and most elite institutions. I am not so...

Plenty of people have been offering their opinions lately about how to manage the current crisis in higher education. One phrase that keeps popping up in all the talk absolutely grates me: “We need to work smarter not harder.” I heard that phrase repeatedly about 10 years ago in lots of federal agencies that were tightening their belts. That was about the same time as “paradigm shift” was the phrase du jour in higher ed.

My cynical opinion is that such phrases are really just voiced verbal pauses — the equivalent of long “ums” that fill the vacuum when someone really doesn’t know what to say. Sort of a more official way of saying “yada yada yada”: You fill in the blanks.

What phrases are driving you crazy in your institution’s jargon these days?

One of my favorite academic bloggers is Dean Dad, author of the very wise “Confessions of a Community College Dean.” In a recent post, he argues that the current crisis in academic hiring may have the salutary result of dispelling what I would call the “myth of meritocracy” in the job market. He argues that the economic problems higher education is facing have created such a mismatch between the size and quality of the applicant pool, and the number of available faculty jobs, that there is no meaningful way to correlate applicants’ quality (however defined) with success on the job market.

Surely there are many wonderful candidates who, through no fault of their own, will not get faculty jobs. There are also a lesser number (I hope) of weak candidates who will somehow manage to find academic employment despite their shortcomings. Despite those facts, Dean Dad writes, “we academics...

In a recent column in The Chronicle, my fellow dean and vice president at Augustana College, Jeff Abernathy, outlines why his institution is bucking the current hiring-freeze mode and aggressively pursuing new faculty hires. He makes an excellent case.

My own institution, Buena Vista University, is about half the size of Augustana and, unlike that college, we are not in a period of great enrollment growth. We have five searches under way, none of them for new positions. Like Augustana, we have seen strong applicant pools. We have completed three of the five searches with truly excellent hires who promise to bring us great things in the fall, and I remain hopeful that the other searches will work out equally well.

I would love to do two or three more searches and, in all likelihood, we could afford it, but here’s the big problem: We have very little idea what our financial picture ...

With the holiday season upon us, many folks are facing the annual dilemma of workplace gift giving. I personally like to give to charities where possible rather than give gifts that are either tawdry or just plain stupid. Of course, then I wonder if people think of a donation given in their name as being like the one George Costanza on Seinfeld made to “The Human Fund.”

How is the gift-giving climate is on your campus? Are gifts for colleagues and assistants demanded? Are they met with hostility? Does a failure-to-give generate lasting repercussions? Do people chip in on gifts for administrative assistants and housekeeping, or are you all left to your own resources?

What advice can you provide new faculty and staff members about scouting out the gift-giving culture at their institutions?

I’ve mentioned the Tenured Radical blog before. Its author, Claire Potter, is a consistently thoughtful and provocative commenter on many issues of interest to faculty members, administrators, and others concerned with the state of higher education.

Her most recent entry, Lifeboat: A Conversation About the Incredible Shrinking Budget, is a meditation on how her own institution is discussing its budget issues. As she suggests, almost every college and university in the country (and certainly every one that’s responsibly managed) is having some version of this conversation.

At my own institution, the vice presidents and the president spent most of a day earlier in this week posing various budget, endowment, and enrollment scenarios, and trying to think about the most constructive ways to respond (which may turn out to be the least-destructive ways). The conversation was challenging,...

Several recent news stories have reported on voluntary pay cuts taken by some senior administrators during the current financial crisis. The logic behind such pay cuts is both practical (it frees up money for other purposes) and political (it signals a willingness by leaders to share the pain).

I once heard a public-relations consultant say, however, that voluntary pay cuts might actually be unwise, sort of like publicly cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. His concern was that for off-campus folks (and some people on campuses, too), such a move might smack of desperation, triggering other panics and anxieties among prospective students, donors, and other constituencies.

Is it wise for senior administrators to take pay cuts, especially if no other employee salaries are being cut, or is it merely cynical symbolism?

As I mentioned in my last entry, I offered jobs to two candidates last week, and I suspect I will be able to make another offer this week. One of our candidates — who looks outstanding — has verbally accepted our offer, and we are preparing the paperwork to send her a contract and formal letter. I expect to speak to the other candidate soon, and since that one, too, looks to be a wonderful fit in every way, I am hoping that she will join us as well.

My academic discipline is English. The hiring schedule of the Modern Language Asosciation is bred in my bones: applications by November 15, interviews at MLA in late December, campus visits in January or February, and a completed search as soon thereafter as possible. But this year, we are interviewing candidates on the campus now in hopes of making offers and maybe even getting acceptances before the winter break.

There’s a part of me ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed, “The rich are not like us.” In higher education, we have our version of the rich: well-heeled institutions that enjoy endowment values in the billions of dollars. Most of the time, such institutions are not like the rest of us, especially during budget-building season.

Perhaps it’s only natural to feel a touch of jealousy over such wealth. Jealousy is ugly, to be sure, but it’s also a common emotion.

The Germans have a nice word for the extension of jealousy: “schadenfreude,” or taking pleasure at the expense of others, especially when they are in pain. I suppose that the endowment declines of our wealthiest institutions have invited a sense of Schadenfreude at their expense. “Ah,” one might say with glee, “those hoarders! They have trusted in the abundance of their riches, but now they are struggling just like the rest of us.�...

I’m beginning to make offers for the positions we are fortunate to be able to fill this year, and I’m reminded of just how complicated that process can be. At my small institution, there’s a minimum of bureaucracy and a relatively informal process of approval before we make an offer. Even so, there are several steps to take before I can pick up the phone.

This morning I am going to make two calls. I have been thinking about the various parameters of each offer: how much in salary, moving money, and start-up dollars. Do I offer release time during that first year to help the new professors get started? Can I bump up faculty-development support for a year or two?

With salaries, it’s always been my principle and practice to offer as much as I easily can right from the first. The two most important reasons are that I don’t believe faculty salaries are the best place for an institution...