The rise in numbers of non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) and the impact on student success is not a simple causal relationship. Rather, it is a complex formula of academic supports, strategic staffing, and professional socialization that drives student retention and, inevitably, graduation. At the center of the administration, policies, students,…

The goals of higher education--engaging the hearts and minds of our next generation, advancing novel and pragmatic solutions to the most pressing local and global problems--call for great passion and skill. That's not the whole formula, though. Diversity performs its own powerful role. College faculties that represent a diversity of expertise,…

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA), a public research university, has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to improving working conditions for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) with a 20-year track record of progressive policies to improve the support for them. This commitment is manifested through a series of improvements in policies,…

Boston University (BU) has had a history of contentious relations between administrators and faculty. John Silber, who ran the university from the early 1970s through the late 1990s, gave faculty little say in university governance, and an "us versus them" atmosphere soon developed. In 2004, however, major changes in the board of…

Reviews three Massachusetts court cases involving nontenured teachers that helped delineate the scope of an arbitrator's authority. (Author/IRT)

Available from Commerce Clearing House, Inc., 4025 West Peterson Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60646. (JG)

Collective bargaining in higher education and a few other fields is examined in 21 papers from a 1986 conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. After an introduction by Joel M. Douglas, the academic collective bargaining system is reexamined in four papers. Additional papers…