Recommended Principles to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships


Book Description

The reputation of a college or institution depends upon the integrity of its faculty and administration. Though budgets are important, ethics are vital, and a host of new ethical problems now beset higher education. From MOOCS and intellectual property rights to drug industry payments and conflicts of interest, this book offers AAUP policy language and best practices to deal with all the campus-wide challenges of today's corporate university: • Preserving the integrity of research and public respect for higher education • Eliminating and managing individual and institutional financial conflicts of interest • Maintaining unbiased hiring and recruitment policies • Establishing grievance procedures and due process rights for faculty, graduate students, and academic professionals • Mastering the complications of negotiations over patents and copyright • Assuring the ethics of research involving human subjects. In a time of dynamic change Recommended Principles to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships offers an indispensable and authoritative guide to sustaining integrity and tradition while achieving great things in twenty-first century academia.




Restoring the Promise


Book Description

American higher education is increasingly in trouble. Costs are too high, learning is too little, and underemployment abounds post-graduation. Universities are facing an uncertain and unsettling future with free speech suppression, out-of-control Federal student aid programs, soaring administrative costs, and intercollegiate athletics mired in corruption. Restoring the Promise explores these issues and exposes the federal government's role in contributing to them. With up-to-date discussions of the most recent developments on university campuses, this book is the most comprehensive assessment of universities in recent years, and one that decidedly rejects conventional wisdom. Restoring the Promise is an absolute must-read for those concerned with the future of higher education in America.




The Lost Soul of Higher Education


Book Description

The professor and historian delivers a major critique of how political and financial attacks on the academy are undermining our system of higher education. Making a provocative foray into the public debates over higher education, acclaimed historian Ellen Schrecker argues that the American university is under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, outside pressure groups have staged massive challenges to academic freedom, beginning in the 1960s with attacks on faculty who opposed the Vietnam War, and resurfacing more recently with well-funded campaigns against Middle Eastern Studies scholars. Connecting these dots, Schrecker reveals a distinct pattern of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any scholarly study that threatens the status quo. At the same time, Schrecker deftly chronicles the erosion of university budgets and the encroachment of private-sector influence into academic life. From the dwindling numbers of full-time faculty to the collapse of library budgets, The Lost Soul of Higher Education depicts a system increasingly beholden to corporate America and starved of the resources it needs to educate the new generation of citizens. A sharp riposte to the conservative critics of the academy by the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, The Lost Soul of Higher Education, reveals a system in peril—and defends the vital role of higher education in our democracy.




Written/Unwritten


Book Description

The academy may claim to seek and value diversity in its professoriate, but reports from faculty of color around the country make clear that departments and administrators discriminate in ways that range from unintentional to malignant. Stories abound of scholars--despite impressive records of publication, excellent teaching evaluations, and exemplary service to their universities--struggling on the tenure track. These stories, however, are rarely shared for public consumption. Written/Unwritten reveals that faculty of color often face two sets of rules when applying for reappointment, tenure, and promotion: those made explicit in handbooks and faculty orientations or determined by union contracts and those that operate beneath the surface. It is this second, unwritten set of rules that disproportionally affects faculty who are hired to "diversify" academic departments and then expected to meet ever-shifting requirements set by tenured colleagues and administrators. Patricia A. Matthew and her contributors reveal how these implicit processes undermine the quality of research and teaching in American colleges and universities. They also show what is possible when universities persist in their efforts to create a diverse and more equitable professorate. These narratives hold the academy accountable while providing a pragmatic view about how it might improve itself and how that improvement can extend to academic culture at large. The contributors and interviewees are Ariana E. Alexander, Marlon M. Bailey, Houston A. Baker Jr., Dionne Bensonsmith, Leslie Bow, Angie Chabram, Andreana Clay, Jane Chin Davidson, April L. Few-Demo, Eric Anthony Grollman, Carmen V. Harris, Rashida L. Harrison, Ayanna Jackson-Fowler, Roshanak Kheshti, Patricia A. Matthew, Fred Piercy, Deepa S. Reddy, Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez, Wilson Santos, Sarita Echavez See, Andrew J. Stremmel, Cheryl A. Wall, E. Frances White, Jennifer D. Williams, and Doctoral Candidate X.




The Professor Is In


Book Description

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.




Understanding Academic Freedom


Book Description

"This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to academic freedom, surveying its history and application to research, teaching, and public expression, as well as its treatment in the legal arena and its applicability to students"--




A History of American Higher Education


Book Description

The definitive history of American higher education—now up to date. Colleges and universities are among the most cherished—and controversial—institutions in the United States. In this updated edition of A History of American Higher Education, John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Exploring American higher education from its founding in the seventeenth century to its struggle to innovate and adapt in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Thelin demonstrates that the experience of going to college has been central to American life for generations of students and their families. Drawing from archival research, along with the pioneering scholarship of leading historians, Thelin raises profound questions about what colleges are—and what they should be. Covering issues of social class, race, gender, and ethnicity in each era and chapter, this new edition showcases a fresh concluding chapter that focuses on both the opportunities and problems American higher education has faced since 2010. The essay on sources has been revised to incorporate books and articles published over the past decade. The book also updates the discussion of perennial hot-button issues such as big-time sports programs, online learning, the debt crisis, the adjunct crisis, and the return of the culture wars and addresses current areas of contention, including the changing role of governing boards and the financial challenges posed by the economic downturn. Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.




The Fall of the Faculty


Book Description

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty. As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.




Professing to Learn


Book Description

Research, teaching, service, and public outreach—all are aspects of being a tenured professor. But this list of responsibilities is missing a central component: actual scholarly learning—disciplinary knowledge that faculty teach, explore in research, and share with the academic community. How do professors pursue such learning when they must give their attention as well to administrative and other obligations? Professing to Learn explores university professors’ scholarly growth and learning in the years immediately following the award of tenure, a crucial period that has a lasting impact on the academic career. Some launch from this point to multiple accomplishments and accolades, while others falter, their academic pursuits stalled. What contributes to these different outcomes? Drawing on interviews with seventy-eight professors in diverse disciplines and fields at five major American research universities, Anna Neumann describes how tenured faculty shape and disseminate their own disciplinary knowledge while attending committee meetings, grading exams, holding office hours, administering programs and departments, and negotiating with colleagues. By exploring the intellectual activities pursued by these faculty and their ongoing efforts to develop and define their academic interests, Professing to Learn directs the attention of higher education professionals and policy makers to the core aim of higher education: the creation of academic knowledge through research, teaching, and service.




The Gig Academy


Book Description

Why the Gig Academy is the dominant organizational form within the higher education economy—and its troubling implications for faculty, students, and the future of college education. Over the past two decades, higher education employment has undergone a radical transformation with faculty becoming contingent, staff being outsourced, and postdocs and graduate students becoming a larger share of the workforce. For example, the faculty has shifted from one composed mostly of tenure-track, full-time employees to one made up of contingent, part-time teachers. Non-tenure-track instructors now make up 70 percent of college faculty. Their pay for teaching eight courses averages $22,400 a year—less than the annual salary of most fast-food workers. In The Gig Academy, Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott assess the impact of this disturbing workforce development. Providing an overarching framework that takes the concept of the gig economy and applies it to the university workforce, this book scrutinizes labor restructuring across both academic and nonacademic spheres. By synthesizing these employment trends, the book reveals the magnitude of the problem for individual workers across all institutional types and job categories while illustrating the damaging effects of these changes on student outcomes, campus community, and institutional effectiveness. A pointed critique of contemporary neoliberalism, the book also includes an analysis of the growing divide between employees and administrators. The authors conclude by examining the strengthening state of unionization among university workers. Advocating a collectivist, action-oriented vision for reversing the tide of exploitation, Kezar, DePaola, and Scott urge readers to use the book as a tool to interrogate the state of working relations on their own campuses and fight for a system that is run democratically for the benefit of all. Ultimately, The Gig Academy is a call to arms, one that encourages non-tenure-track faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students, and administrative and tenure-track allies to unite in a common struggle against the neoliberal Gig Academy.