Since the 1980s, as composition has grown as a scholarly field, the composition job market has grown correspondingly in both size and complexity. Specifically, over the fourteen years since academic year (AY) 2000-2001, ads seeking expertise in composition and rhetoric have consistently made up 30 percent or more of all job ads placed in the…

In April 2013, "NEJHE" launched its "New Directions for Higher Education" series to examine emerging issues, trends and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs, and practices. In this installment, DiSalvio interviews Adrianna Kezar, professor of higher education at the University of Southern California…

In this paper, the authors call for an approach that, in recognizing the economic realities facing most institutions, attempts to put aside objections that funding is simply not available to support an expansion of the current tenure system. In calling for the changes in faculty working conditions, the authors recognize that change will…

A combination of destructive trends in higher education--shrinking state budgets, stagnant student aid, the growth of corporate-style management, the overuse and exploitation of contingent faculty, increasing workloads and attacks on academic freedom--is weakening the educational integrity and professionalism of American colleges and universities.…

In this article, the author talks about the tenure process of being a professor which can be gloomy for assistant professors as they share a common culture of the joyless quest for promotion and tenure. Life as an assistant professor has its bleak moments; however, the downbeat cosmology is, in the end, dysfunctional and hurts more than it…

Back in the 1970s, when the author was an art professor at California State University at Northridge, he had a colleague who absolutely would not say anything about anybody that he would not say to that person's face. Marvin Harden, the African-American artist, originally came to Los Angeles in the late 1950s from segregated Austin, Texas, to play…

As anyone who has ever defended a thesis or been on a tenure track must know, American institutions of higher education have rigorous and finely calibrated ways of according respect to those who work in them. What they do not have enough of is respect from those beyond their gates. The author argues that the system that created the two-tiered…

The concept of tenure is an integral part of the employment relationship between institutions of higher education and individual faculty members (Mawdsley, 1999). Promotion and tenure decisions are often difficult and always have important long-term consequences for both the candidate and the institution (Rhoades-Catanach & Stout, 2000). Mentoring…

Asserts that academic freedom concerns much more than tenure; for adjuncts and other contingent faculty labor conditions significantly restrict academic freedom in its deepest and most practical sense: the freedom to provide and facilitate the best possible education for students. (EV)

Focuses on the case of an untenured assistant professor being proposed for promotion to tenured associate professor. Offers three essential steps for the department to take in evaluating the candidate for reappointment or tenure and in recommending the candidate to other committees and the dean. (PRA)

Introduces the issue's Symposium on Academic Freedom and Responsibility. Discusses the current debate on tenure and its role in securing and promoting academic freedom. Proposes a model "Academic Freedom Policy and Procedures," to which subsequent articles in the issue (by Robert M. O'Neil, J. Peter Byrne, and Richard T. De George)…

Agrees that Martin Michaelson's proposal in "Should Untenured as Well as Tenured Faculty Be Guaranteed Academic Freedom? A Few Observations" deserves study as an alternative to the current system of tenure and might be useful because it affords more scrupulous procedures for personnel judgments about new faculty. Asserts that anything…

Asserts that Martin Michaelson's proposal in "Should Untenured as Well as Tenured Faculty Be Guaranteed Academic Freedom? A Few Observations," despite its good intentions, is seriously flawed and if adopted in preference to existing standards will weaken rather than strengthen academic freedom. (EV)

Examines two problems with the promotion system fostered by the AAUP and certain universities: (1) the policies as they deal with junior faculty; and (2) the kind of colleague the policies have produced. (NH)

Discusses factors from malice to humbuggery that complicate and sully the tenure decision and call into question the fundamental assumptions which sustain tenure within the academy. Offers recommendations intended to ensure integrity in the tenure decision. (PRA)