Workplace Blog

The Chronicle: Report From Education Department Offers More Comprehensive Look at Faculty Salaries in 2004-5

The averages reported by the Education Department are a bit lower than the AAUP averages, probably because the department’s statistics are more comprehensive and include many smaller colleges that do not participate in the AAUP survey. For example, the average salary of a full professor is $87,634 according to the new report and $91,548 according to the AAUP. Both reports exclude medical faculty members, whose higher pay tends to skew the national averages.

The new report also contains data on the number of faculty members with varying degrees of tenure, at different types of institutions. And it offers statistics on what colleges spend on fringe benefits for faculty members. The largest such benefit for full-timers at nonprofit colleges are retirement plans. The biggest benefit for their counterparts in the for-profit sector are medical and dental plans.

The Chronicle: U. of Wisconsin at Madison to Require Union-Friendly Factories Among Its Licensed Apparel Makers

The University of Wisconsin at Madison plans to require the companies licensed to make apparel bearing its name or logo to have at least 25 percent of the goods produced at factories where workers are allowed to form unions.

The “designated suppliers” program will begin this fall for all 150 licensees who produce Madison apparel.

The pilot program, which will run for 18 months, is in response to a recent proposal by United Students Against Sweatshops calling for similar action to protect the rights of workers in the global garment industry.

Z Magazine‘s January 2006 issue includes articles on the NYU TAs’, the British Columbia teachers’ strike and fearmongering in higher education.

ACADEMICA: McCarthyism Redux
Morgan Cohen
The politics of fear-mongering have been given yet another target: education. Conservative activists who have long bemoaned the changing face of the university in U.S. society have mounted a campaign for education “reform” in college classrooms. (More)

STUDENT ORGANIZING: NYU on Strike
Ari Paul
The graduate students at New York University (NYU) made history in 2001 by successfully negotiating a contract between a teachers’ assistants (TA) union and a private U.S. university. However, going into Thanksgiving break in 2005, the university still refused to negotiate with the union for a second contract. As a result some classes were cancelled while others were moved to off-campus locations. (More)

WALKOUTS: British Columbia Teachers’ Strike
E. Wayne Ross
In British Columbia 42,000 teachers walked out of the classroom and on to the picket line in October, demanding improved working and learning conditions from the government, as well as salary increases. (More

Insider Higher Ed: New Online Option for Private Colleges

Regis University last week announced the creation of a new consortium — already with 39 members and growing — to allow private colleges to essentially trade courses online

Little Red Book,’ Big Fat Lie

A student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth has admitted that he fabricated his claims of being interrogated by Department of Homeland Security officials for checking out Mao’s Little Red Book from the university’s interlibrary loan system.

LA Times: Clinton Jencks, Organizer Who Led Mineworkers Strike Later Taught at San Diego State

Union organizer Clinton Jencks, who led New Mexico mineworkers in a McCarthy-era strike chronicled in the classic 1953 motion picture “Salt of the Earth,” has died. He was 87.

Jencks died Dec. 14 in San Diego of natural causes, according to his daughter, Linda O’Connell.

An organizer for a progressive union, Jencks led a 15-month strike begun in 1950 near Bayard, N.M., against Empire Zinc Co. by the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 890. The largely Latino strikers sought pay equal to that of white workers, improved safety conditions and healthcare — goals they eventually won with great effort.

Albany Times-Union: SUNY interim lands top job

The man who has been at the helm of the State University of New York on an interim basis since June was given the job permanently Monday.
Trustees said John Ryan had the right combination of experience, personality and leadership skills to guide the 64-campus system.

Aside from three trustees who abstained because they felt the vote for chancellor was rushed, 11 others voted unanimously for Ryan, a retired vice admiral in the Navy who had been superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, president of SUNY Maritime College in Queens and interim president of the University at Albany.

After trustees tapped Ryan for the $340,000-a-year job, he entered the room where they had voted to a round of applause. While he didn’t lay out an agenda for the coming months, he did share some ideas on how SUNY can climb to the “next level” — an oft-cited goal for the system going forward.

Inside Higher Ed: An admirial for SUNY

A period of uncertainty over the leadership of the 64-campus State University of New York came to an end Monday with the announcement that John R. Ryan, the acting chancellor, would keep the job permanently.

Ryan spent the first part of his career in the Navy, rising to the rank of vice admiral and serving as a popular superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy from 1998-2002. From Annapolis, he continued a career as a college administrator, serving as president of SUNY’s Maritime College, acting president of SUNY at Albany, and acting chancellor of the system. His reputation is non-ideological and as someone who has pushed with vigor for more money for SUNY campuses and students.

Inside Higher Ed: Depressed medical professors

Medical school faculty members don’t like their jobs as much as they used to, and their professional despair could trickle down to medical students, according to a report in the January issue of Academic Medicine.

The study, “The Impact of the Changing Health Care Environment on the Health and Well-Being of Faculty at Four Medical Schools,” used 2001 survey responses from 1,457 academic physicians, and found that about one-fifth of them, men and women nearly equally, displayed at least some symptoms of clinical depression, up from 14 percent in a survey of academic physicians in 1984. Nationally, about 11 percent of women and 7 percent of men report symptoms of depressions. Little previous data on the mental health of academic physicians existed for comparison, but the study did find that younger faculty members — those under 35 – reported higher levels of anxiety and less job satisfaction than older faculty members.

Inside Higher Ed: What you do all day

People in academe constantly talk about the division of professors’ time between teaching, research and service. But according to new data and a report released by the U.S. Education Department on Wednesday, the real triptych of higher education work activity is teaching, research, and administrative duties.