This article explores the issues casual academics face in Australia and whether these pose risks to teaching quality. The logic of the rampant casualisation in Australian universities is exposed first (i.e., mainly flexibility and cost saving to offset drops in government funding), followed by a discussion on the theoretical risks casualisation…

In the past few decades, especially since the 2008-09 economic downturn, the faculty of American colleges and universities has undergone a far-reaching transformation. Multiple factors, mainly extraneous to the campus itself, are reshaping higher education, and as a result a reprioritizing of the internal allocation of resources is occurring. The…

A number of studies have documented a trend of higher grades awarded by postsecondary institutions in both the United States and Canada over the last two decades. Grade inflation in higher education is a potentially costly problem for a variety of reasons, but little empirical research about the causes of grade inflation has been conducted. This…

The nature of the American academic workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past several decades. Whereas full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty were once the norm, more than two-thirds of the professoriate in non-profit postsecondary education is now comprised of non-tenure-track faculty. New hires across all institutional types are now…

It is important to understand existing research on the connections between non-tenure-track faculty and student learning and to continue to research these issues. Although working conditions vary across the academy and even within a single institution, many faculty--particularly part-timers--are not permitted to contribute to curriculum planning…

The author begins by asserting that tenure does have a future, even though cultural and economic trends in American higher education have brought it to near annihilation in the past decade. She is sorry to say that it has survived these trends for one troubling reason--tenure is the ultimate employment perk for very successful members of the…

In this article, we start by considering the relevant parts of the French educational system and the data relating to science at the end of secondary school and the early years of university. We show an increase, till 1995, and then a decline in the study of mathematics at baccalaureate and university level. However, our main conclusions relate to…