The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently released a report on The Employment Status of Instructional Staff Members in Higher Education.
The report reveals that the growth in contingent faculty is much greater than the growth in tenured faculty, a story all-too-familiar to Canadian professors and academic librarians.
Between 1989 and 2011, the total number of faculty grew by 81 per cent, but the growth was mostly in the ranks of the continently employed.
There were more than twice as many non-tenured full-time faculty and more than two and a half times the number of part-time faculty by 2011. See more...

By Michael McPherson. If colleges follow Bill Bowen’s advice and “untie the knot” between athletics and big-time commercial entertainment, they will also be untying, or at least loosening, the knot that binds colleges to the NFL, the NBA, and the WNBA. Today colleges have a near-monopoly on American students’ access to those leagues, a fact we are reminded of every autumn Sunday, when NFL starters introduce themselves on TV by calling out their college connections (including, of course, THE Ohio State University). More...

By Peter Schmidt. Top officials of the American Association of University Professors have fended off an election challenge from a slate of candidates who had accused them of being too focused on union organizing.
In an election that represented just the latest in a series of skirmishes over the AAUP’s direction, the incumbent slate prevailed in all four races for the association’s top offices, according to voting results released on Thursday. More...

By Chris Good. It would be a cultural shift, but the Obama administration is hoping to change the perception of two- and four-year universities and what is needed for success. Through two new skills-training programs, utilizing grant money announced in 2010, the administration is encouraging a competition to foster courses developed by industry at the community college level and an apprentice job scholarship program. President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden appeared at a community college in Pittsburgh today to announce $500 million in grant funding for community college job-training programs and $100 million in funding for apprenticeship grants. More...

By Jennifer Conlin. In January, residents here learned the news that the senior place-kicker for the University of Michigan’s football team had been permanently “separated” from the college for violating its student sexual misconduct policy. In addition, the violation, what the authorities said was a sexual assault, occurred in 2009, when the kicker was a freshman, and his punishment was not determined until his athletic career had ended this past winter.
The article describing all of this, based on documents reviewed by two reporters, stated, “It’s unclear why sanctions were not decided in this matter until recently.” More...