The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac Issue for 2008-09 is out, and it contains some interesting comparisons with the preceding year’s results. A few highlights:

——-As reported a few days ago, SAT scores remained the same this year, but the preceding year (the most recent scores in the 2008-09 Almanac) saw a drop of 1 point on “Critical Reading” by boys, a 3 point drop in math by girls and by boys, and a 2 point drop for both in writing.

——-On “Political Views,” 2007 freshmen inched slightly to the left of 2006 freshmen. 23.9 percent of 2006 called themselves “conservative,” while 23.1 percent of 2007 did so. Liberals in 2006 reached 28.4 percent, while liberals in 2007 reached 29.3 percent. (An added note not contained in the Chronicle data is that the youth vote runs about 2-to-1 for Obama.)

——-Changes in Endowments from 2006 to 2007 were extraordinary. Harvard, at #1, rose 19.8 percent. Others down the list: Yale (25%), Stanford (21.9%), Princeton (21%), Texas (18%), MIT (19.3%), Columbia (20.4%), Michigan (25.4%). My own school, which not too many years ago lay in the top 5, now stands in the mid-teens and gained a mere 14.2%. Will someone please calculate the tuition increases at these schools during the same period? And the faculty salary increases? And the percentage of teachers who are part-time … ?

——-As for part-timers, the percentage continues to climb. The Almanac contains a box on “Trends in Faculty Employment,” and from 1987 to 2005, the portion of faculty who were part-time went from 34 percent to 48 percent. Given that part-timers take up few of the graduate and junior/senior-level course teaching assignments, what does that give us for the percentage of part-timers handling freshman/sophomore offerings (usually the most labor-intensive courses, with the most difficult students)?

——-At the doctoral level, women are slightly closing the large gap in physical sciences and engineering. In 2005, 18.3 percent of engineering PhDs went to women. In 2006, it hit 20.2 percent. In 2005, 26.4 percent of PhDs in the physical sciences went to women. In 2006, it hit 27.6 percent.

——-More doctoral numbers in those fields by race. In 2005, 2.8 percent of PhDs in physical sciences went to blacks, 3.8 percent to Hispanics; in 2006, 2.2 percent went to blacks, 4.2 percent to Hispanics. In 2005, 4.3 percent of engineering degrees went to blacks, 3.7 percent to Hispanics. In 2006, 4.2 percent went to blacks, 4.7 percent to Hispanics.