California lawmakers are still deadlocked over a plan to close the state’s $25-billion budget gap. But the state’s universities released plans to slash faculty and staff salaries, sharply cut enrollment, and raise tuition in the expectation of the largest cut in state support in several decades.

Faculty and staff members at the University of California will be placed on furlough starting in September for seven to 26 days per year, according to a plan released last Friday by the system’s president, Mark G. Yudof. The plan, which is expected to be approved by the university’s Board of Regents next week, will amount to a salary cut of 4 to 10 percent, with the highest-earning employees facing the largest cuts.

The temporary furlough will push the university’s faculty compensation to about 20 percent behind comparative institutions, university officials said at a news conference. “We’re...

Financial-aid administrators believe their work is important, but many find their budgets and staffing levels inadequate, according to a job-satisfaction survey released here today at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators’ national conference.

The Nasfaa 2008 Financial Aid Administrators’ Job Satisfaction Survey was designed to take the pulse of the profession as allegations that financial-aid employees were too close to lenders received national attention in 2007. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2008. A modified version of the questions is available for financial-aid directors to use in surveying their own staff members.

The national survey found that 98 percent of respondents consider their work important to students and their institutions, 96 percent are proud of their jobs, and 86 percent report high personal satisfaction in their professional...

San Diego State University fired its head football coach, Chuck Long, last November after his third straight losing season. So why’s he still keeping office hours?

Mr. Long, a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy but a coach whose Aztec teams went a combined 9-27, has a clause in his contract guaranteeing him $715,900 per year through December 31, 2010, as long as he keeps working at the university. If he gets a new job, he forgoes the money.

Not many takers on the job market these days — surely no one willing to pay a losing coach that kind of coin. So like a modern-day George Costanza, Mr. Long is hanging around the campus doing “projects and analysis.”

San Diego State is paying an outside consultant $125 an hour to work out a settlement. And university officials say that $1-million has been pledged to pay off the former coach’s contract, but it’s not clear how much of that has come...

Thanks to Female Science Professor for sharing this post about a conversation she had with a male colleague. He displayed a curious lack of sympathy for a scientist who had compromised her career for her family:

I said: Think about how she feels. She has a PhD, did a postdoc, wrote some high profile papers, but then took a technician job at the institution where her husband is a big professor. She’s good enough to have been a professor in her own right, but instead she spends her days helping others do their research, with no hope of advancing in her career.

My colleague looked puzzled. He said: She has nothing to complain about. She has a job and she and her husband live in the same place.

That’s when Female Science Professor realized that her colleague’s attitude might result from the fact that he, like plenty of other academics, had made the opposite, but no less...

An article in the latest issue of The Chronicle confirms what many academic parents already know: Despite the flexible hours, academe isn’t as family friendly as people seem to think it is; in fact, it can be downright unfriendly towards female academics with three or more children, who may be “seen by their peers and supervisors as less than serious about their work in a profession that often expects nothing short of complete devotion,” reporter Robin Wilson writes. Statements such as this one by an associate dean of academic affairs, who asked to remain anonymous because she did not want to be publicly critical of women with children, are all too common, Wilson notes:

“Kids aren’t like computer programs that run predictably. With more than two, there is always going to be someone who is sick or needy, and so something at work is going to have to give. If anyone told me they...

Craven Williams abruptly retired on Tuesday after 16 years as president of Greensboro College, in North Carolina, the Methodist institution’s trustees announced today. He had been credited with helping to revive the college after he became president in 1993, but in recent years has presided over an institution struggling with mounting debt and a severe cash crunch.

The scope of the college’s financial problems came to light in April, when Mr. Williams surprised faculty and staff members by announcing layoffs and a temporary, 20-percent pay cut across the board. Just last November, he had said that while the college was looking to trim expenses, it anticipated no layoffs and would go ahead with 2-percent raises planned for January.

According to the News & Record, a local newspaper, faculty leaders had been planning to call for a vote of no confidence in his leadership this week.

A Ph.D. candidate worked on a sizeable grant for several years, serving under a very encouraging faculty mentor. When she began applying for faculty positions, she asked her supervisor for a letter of recommendation that could be filed on her behalf with the university’s placement services.

The supervisor’s response surprised her: “I would prefer for you to draft the letter for me to review and sign. I think you will know which skills and strengths will speak to your market more appropriately and effectively. Just send me the file when you’ve written it and I’ll take care of the rest.”

I thought about that story (which is true, by the way) when I read this post about a former lawmaker in Florida who wrote his own job description and contract for a plum position.

Such incidents make me wonder just how much ghostwriting actually is going on in higher education.

What rules should...

Thanks to Feminist Law Professors for pointing to a series of posts over at the Faculty Lounge on whether tenure should be abolished in law schools. The author of the series is Kimberly D. Krawiec, a guest blogger and Duke University law professor, who picks up where a recent piece in The Chronicle Review left off and explains why doing away with tenure “is unlikely to be the fix-all for institutional incompetence that many critics believe.” Check out all four of her posts:

My Tenure’s for Sale. How About Yours?

Incentives and Institutions – Why Stop With the Banks?

When It Comes to Law Faculty, We’re All Post-Modernists

‘We All Contribute In Our Own Ways’ Is Not a Valid Institutional Goal

Elsewhere on Feminist Law Professors, Ann M. Bartow, a University of South Carolina law professor, is appalled that women continue to be paid less than men when women...

Some 150 colleges have been recognized for their workplace policies in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s second annual Great Colleges to Work For survey.

More than 300 four- and two-year colleges signed up for this year’s program, and 247 went through the entire survey process, nearly triple last year’s number of participants. The results, which were published today, are based on responses from nearly 41,000 administrators, faculty members, and staff members at those institutions.

The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For program recognizes colleges (grouped by enrollment size) for specific best practices and policies, including those affecting compensation and benefits, faculty-administration relations, and confidence in senior leadership. There are 26 recognition categories for four-year institutions, and 15 for community colleges.

Among four-year colleges, 122 institutions...