By Colleen Flaherty. The Government Accountability Office on Monday released a report called “Contingent Workforce: Size, Characteristics, Compensation and Work Experiences of Adjunct and Other Non-Tenure-Track Faculty.” The paper follows up on a 2015 GAO report that found instructors off the tenure track earn less and have less stable positions than their tenure-track and tenured counterparts. More...
AAUP Files Brief in Challenge to Campus Carry
By Colleen Flaherty. The American Association of University Professors filed a joint amicus brief this week in support of a legal challenge to a Texas law permitting handguns on public college and university campuses, including classrooms. AAUP and its partners for the brief, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, say that the law and corresponding campus policies violate faculty members’ academic freedom, since instructors may fear discussing controversial topics with guns in the classroom. The brief pertains to a case brought by several faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin who argued the same. More...
Supporting Undergraduate Teaching Improvement
By Colleen Flaherty. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences this week released the fourth and final paper from its Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, called “Policies and Practices to Support Undergraduate Teaching Improvement.” The paper says that institutions are increasingly under social, economic and political pressure — just not pressure to improve undergraduate teaching. More...
Fordham Non-Tenure-Track Professors and Postdocs Vote to Form Union
By Colleen Flaherty. Non-tenure-track faculty members — adjuncts, full-timers and postdoctoral fellows — at Fordham University voted 16-to-1 to form a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union, they announced Tuesday. More...
Ghost From the Past
By Colleen Flaherty. Professor’s essay about being harassed and raped by her late adviser sparks calls for public acknowledgment of the reasons for his past suspension from Stanford and the renaming of a disciplinary society mentorship award that bore his name. More...
Behind the Publication Gender Gap
By Colleen Flaherty. Study finds male Ph.D. candidates submit and publish papers at much higher rates than women, even at the same institution. One factor is that women teach more during their Ph.D. programs and men serve more often as research assistants. More...
Retaliation Is Not a Right
By Colleen Flaherty. The Indiana Court of Appeals sided with Purdue University at Calumet last week in rejecting an associate professor’s claims that the institution violated his free speech and other rights. The case centers on the political scientist’s inflammatory comments in the classroom and outside it, many of which deride Muslims. More...
‘Taxing a Coupon’
By Colleen Flaherty. Graduate students and higher education experts warn GOP plan to tax tuition waivers would be disastrous to both students’ finances and institutions’ teaching and research missions. More...
Initiative Seeks to Overhaul Academic Advising
By Colleen Flaherty. The Global Community for Academic Advising and the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education this week announced a new national effort to help colleges and universities redesign academic advising. The two-year Excellence in Academic Advising program is a comprehensive strategic planning process. More...
Promotion, Retention and Faculty Diversity in STEM
By Colleen Flaherty. Has the push for faculty diversity in the sciences led to real gains? A new study of tenure attainment, faculty retention and time to promotion to full professor across four large land-grant institutions analyzed personnel records for assistant and associate professors from 1992 to 2015. More...