Workplace Blog

The Chronicle: The Public View of Politics in the Classroom

The older Americans are, and the less time they have spent on a college campus, the more likely they are to believe that professors are politically biased.

Inside Higher Ed: Late Grades? Pay Up, Professor

Many professors hate grading, and like most human beings, they often put off what they don’t like. So at many colleges, the end of a term results in some proportion of the faculty turning their grades in late, much to the dismay of the registrars whose job it is to process the grades and make them available to students. The outcome can be more than just annoying to the registrars; late grades can delay diplomas, disrupt the awarding of financial aid, or get students into academic trouble.

New Zealand Herald: Wrongly sacked lecturer’s career ‘ruined’ – friend

A university lecturer’s career was ruined when he was wrongly sacked over an offensive email to a student, a former student and friend said today.

The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) yesterday ruled Dr Paul Buchanan was unjustifiably dismissed from Auckland University last July.

It awarded him $51,000 in lost wages and $15,000 for hurt and humiliation.

Inside Higher Ed: Faculty Are Liberal — Who Cares?

One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. The argument is probably made most directly in a film much plugged by Horowitz: “Indoctrinate U.”

A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it’s true that the professoriate leans left. But the study — notably by one Republican professor and one Democratic professor — finds no evidence of indoctrination. Despite students being educated by liberal professors, their politics change only marginally in their undergraduate years, and that deflates the idea that cadres of tenured radicals are somehow corrupting America’s youth — or scaring them into adopting new political views.