May 9, 2008
Friday News Snippets
- Michigan’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling earlier this week barring public universities and government agencies from providing health benefits to employees’ same-sex partners, Hurley Goodall reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog:
The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-2 decision released on Wednesday, ruled that Michigan’s constitutional ban on gay marriage also covers employee benefits. Recognition of domestic partnerships is considered no different than marriage, the court said.
See an article in the Detroit Free Press for more details.
- Elsewhere on the News Blog, Eric Kalderman reports that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has tapped Holden Thorpe, dean of its College of Arts and Sciences, to become the university’s next chancellor.
- The University of Florida announced a plan Monday to lay off 20 faculty members and 118 staff members and reduce undergraduate enrollment by 4,000 over the next four years in order to combat a $47-million budget cut, the Orlando Sentinel reports. See an item on the News Blog for more details.
May 1, 2008
Double Whammy for Wheaton Professor, and Other Reading
- Kent Gramm, a popular and longtime English professor at Wheaton College, is out of a job because he won’t explain the reasons for divorcing his wife to college officials — as required by institutional policy, The Chicago Tribune reports.
- Dean Dad explains why good administrators sometimes make bad decisions.
- A study of postdoctoral researchers at Fermi National Laboratory found evidence of institutional gender bias there, Richard Monastersky reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog. The author, Sherry Towers, a physicist, examined the research productivity and career trajectories of 57 postdoctoral physicists working on Fermilab’s DZero collaboration, an experiment involving some 700 physicists around the world, from 1998-2006 and found that while female postdocs outproduced many of their male counterparts, they were much less likely to be permitted to present their papers at conferences, a fact that ultimately hurt their careers, Monastersky writes. See an article at Nature, and related posts at Historiann, Keeping It Simple, and Young Female Scientist.
- The National Academy of Sciences has elected 72 new scientists to its ranks, 16 of them women, Jeffrey Brainard writes on the News Blog. That’s an improvement over last year, when only nine out of 90 were women, he notes.
- Don’t miss an interesting discussion on The Chronicle’s Forums about how working professors cope with chronic illness, which was inspired by a recent post at Shifting Careers.
April 25, 2008
Moving Away From Fair Pay?
Sadly, though not surprisingly, Republicans filibustered the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HR 2831) in the U.S. Senate yesterday, effectively killing the bill, the Los Angeles Times reports. The bill would have reversed a Supreme Court ruling that gives victims of pay discrimination only a narrow window — 180 days from the date they first get paid — in which to file a complaint. The bill’s defeat means that victims who discover after that six-month time frame that their employer is shafting them have little recourse.
Of course, the reason Republicans opposed the bill, according to Sen. John McCain, who didn’t bother to turn up to cast his vote but said he would’ve voted no (incidentally, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both turned up to support the bill), isn’t because they’re against fair pay for American workers, but because the bill might have exposed employers to lawsuits. Hey, here’s a radical idea for employers seeking to avoid litigation: Pay people fairly, and maybe they won’t sue you.
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Friday April 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]April 23, 2008
Wednesday Reading
- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California have proposed legislation that would give graduate students at private colleges and universities the right to unionize, Charles Huckabee writes on The Chronicle’s News Blog. Brainstorm’s Marc Bousquet has more on the subject.
- Rumor has it that some professors at the Johns Hopkins University are pushing its presidential-search committee to consider New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is an alumnus, as the next chief, The New York Sun reports.
- Elsewhere on The Chronicle’s Web site, David Glenn reports that the University of Missouri has finally — after 10 years — filled its Kenneth L. Lay chair in economics, which was named for the Enron Corporation’s notorious founder, who died in May 2006, just weeks after he was was convicted on numerous counts of corporate fraud.
- Meanwhile, in a recent First Person column, Philip Drew explains why requests for early tenure should often be denied.
- According to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia Institute of Technology has accused two leading health-science-engineering professors, who are husband and wife, of simultaneously drawing paychecks from Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota. The couple, who’d worked at Georgia Tech since 2000, were apparently hired away by Minnesota last fall, but neglected to tell Georgia Tech and continued to collect their paychecks, the reporter, Andrea Jones, writes.
- Finally, Paula Wasley reports that the University of Southern California is closing its German department.
April 22, 2008
Bone-Headed Naivete
When I decided to work on a Ph.D. in English literature, back in the early ’90s, I remember having a conversation with my wife that went something like this:
“Well, it will take me four or five years, but at least when I’m done, I will make a good living. I guess that professors start at, what, about $75K? I hear that full professors all make way over $100 grand.”
My wife, who went to a small, underendowed private college, just laughed. “Um, I think we need to drive through the faculty parking lot at a couple of campuses. There are a lot of very old, very used cars in them. I think you are way off on that starting-salary thing.”
She was right, of course. And was I wrong. The first job I interviewed for when I was A.B.D. was slated to start at $30K, with very limited benefits. I had earned that much back when I taught high-school English.
In a similar vein, I had a friend who was completely green about the way that higher ed worked, and he landed his first college teaching job after working at secondary schools for several years. The college had a formula in place (thanks to collective bargaining) in which secondary experience in the state system was transferable into the college setting. When he arrived for his first day of faculty orientation, he was furious to find that he’d been hired in as an “associate” professor. He marched straight to his vice president for academic affairs to complain, only to be met with laughter.
What’s the most naïve idea you had about the job market in higher education, before you finally gained the wisdom that only experience can bring?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Tuesday April 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [22]April 18, 2008
How to Write Rejection Letters, and Other Reading
- According to an item on The Chronicle’s News Blog, members of the American Association of University Professors have elected Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to another term as president.
- Tenured Radical offers some advice to search-committee members on how to write rejection letters.
- Elsewhere on the News Blog, Robin Wilson reports on a new academic study that shows that professors are less likely than doctors and lawyers to have children.
- Meanwhile, over at Leiter Reports: a Philosophy Blog, search-committee members are sharing suggestions about how to better prepare graduate students for job interviews at schools that place a premium on teaching.
April 16, 2008
Low Faculty Salaries in History, and Other Reading
- PhDinHistory examines faculty salaries in history and observes that they’re declining relative to the salaries of professors in other disciplines.
- In the latest Heads Up column, James H.S. McGregor, professor and co-head of the comparative-literature department at the University of Georgia, explains why raises should not be determined on the basis of how many publications faculty members have generated each year.
- A new report from the American Association of University Professors chastises accreditors for staying mum about the drastic rise in the use of contingent labor in higher education, Audrey Williams June reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog.
- Thanks to Historiann for compiling this roundup of links about bullying and harassment in the academic workplace.
- Meanwhile, FemaleScienceProfessor says it’s “unrealistic” to think you can avoid “working with jerks.”
- According to a recent article in The Courier-Journal, officials at the University of Louisville say state budget cuts are forcing them to consider a salary freeze.
April 9, 2008
Labor News From the North and Other Reading
- A retirement loophole has permitted hundreds of employees of Florida’s state universities to retire and then go back to their jobs, Paul Fain reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog. The practice, which legally allows workers to receive paychecks and pensions simultaneously, has raised eyebrows at a time when the state is slashing university budgets and freezing hiring and enrollment, he writes.
- Colleges and universities in British Columbia are preparing for layoffs in response to the government’s surprise announcement that it’s facing a budget shortfall, Macleans reports.
- The Johns Hopkins University plans to invest $5-million or more over the next five years in a program devoted to hiring and retaining women and racial minorities, Diverse Issues in Higher Education reports.
- Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog comes the news that teaching assistants at McGill University, in Montreal, went on strike yesterday. They’re seeking a 41-percent pay hike, according to an article in the university’s student newspaper.
- Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Canada, has struck a tentative deal with its faculty association, the Exchange Morning Post reports. If approved, the deal would end the strike by part-time faculty members, librarians, and teaching assistants that started in mid-March.
- According to a new hiring report on head coaches in women’s college basketball, a record number of minority candidates — seven African-American coaches, including six women, out of a total of 19 — were hired in 2007-8, Charles Huckabee writes on the News Blog. Unfortunately, as Paul Hewitt, president of Black Coaches & Administrators, the organization that released the report, notes, that’s hardly cause for celebration since the number of minority women in head-coaching jobs in women’s basketball actually shrank over the last decade, Huckabee writes.
- Elsewhere on the News Blog, Robin Wilson reports that the U.S. Department of Labor has concluded its nine-year investigation of gender discrimination at Stanford University, not because there wasn’t any but because 11 of the 16 female faculty members and researchers who had originally filed the complaint in 1999 had withdrawn from it, in some cases because they had reached outside settlements with the university. See an article in the San Francisco Chronicle for more details.
- Meanwhile, don’t miss Thomas H. Benton’s latest Careers column, in which he reviews Marc Bousquet’s book, How the University Works, on the deteriorating economic conditions of academic labor.
- As expected, New Jersey’s State Assembly approved a bill Monday that would give workers the right to paid leave to look after a newborn or a sick relative, bringing the state closer to becoming the third state in the United States to do so, the Associate Press reports. The bill still needs the approval of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who has promised to sign it.
April 4, 2008
Bringing Babies to Work, and Other Reading
- Via the Science Careers Blog comes word that some employers are allowing workers to bring their babies to work. In fact, an article in USA Today notes that “The number of companies allowing children at work on an occasional basis climbed to 29 percent last year, up from 22 percent in 2006, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.”
- Ever wonder which university presidents earn more than President Bush and the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper? An article in Macleans has the answer.
- Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, has been nominated as a candidate for the job of chancellor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, The Boston Globe reports.
- Via the New York Times Well blog comes word of yet another report showing that women face weight discrimination more often than men do (see a previous blog item). Still more unfair, the new study also found that while even modest weight gain put women at risk of experiencing discrimination, men weren’t affected by such bias unless they were significantly overweight.
- Meanwhile, a recent post at the Juggle focuses on a new study by Robin Fretwell Wilson, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, who found that women with M.B.A.‘s are significantly likelier than their male peers to end up divorced or separated. See a post at Feminist Law Professors for more details.
March 31, 2008
Bullies in the Academic Workplace, and Other Reading
- Check out Historiann’s post about bullies in the academic workplace, which was prompted by a recent column in The New York Times.
- “Want to be a successful college president? Go out and earn a few million dollars first,” Paul Fain writes in the March 28 issue of The Chronicle. He explains why a growing number of college chiefs have corporate backgrounds. Read more.
- Meanwhile Dean Dad describes the presidential search at Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., in which two Republican leaders in law and business were added to the list of finalists over the objections of members of the search committee, faculty members, and students, as an example of how not to conduct a search. See an item on the Face Value blog for more details.
- Talk at this past weekend’s joint higher-education conference of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers centered on what unions can do to promote diversity and equal pay for adjuncts, Audrey Williams June reports on The Chronicle’s Web site.
- According to a recent Associated Press article, faculty members at the University of Oregon want to know why some former Oregon administrators are still receiving high salaries and benefits as part-time consultants to the university.
- Harvard University has named Jane Mendillo, the former chief investment officer of Wellesley College, as its new endowment manager, Philanthropy Today reports.
- A recent Wall Street Journal column notes that a growing number of women are filing pregnancy-discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
- It’s official. Mark Yudof will become president of the University of California system later this summer, the News Blog reports.