This article presents the annual report on the economic status of the profession. This year's report covers three main issues--all perennial problems, but with new analysis based on the latest data--in addition to summarizing the current results from the annual American Association of University Professors (AAUP) survey of full-time faculty…

Using contingent faculty gives colleges and universities scheduling flexibility, and the lack of obligation to offer benefits to contingents saves them much money. In this article, the author contends that, in return for this shirking of responsibility, institutions of higher education should provide the merest unemployment insurance benefit to…

What qualities are the essence of a top-notch university professor? "Enthusiastic." "Fun." "Interesting." "Cares about students." These attributes are listed in student reviews of America's number one professor for 2009, as determined by the Web site ratemyprofessor.com. Other students made these comments about the same instructor: "Very easy A,"…

This article presents three recent American Association of University Professors (AAUP) cases that involved the dismissal of a senior non-tenure-track member of the faculty. The most recent case resulted in the investigating committee's report on Nicholls State University, a regional public institution in Louisiana. Preceding Nicholls was an…

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…

This article talks about the issues on gender and contingent labor in the field of composition. The authors contend that the composition programs are feminized, devalued, and heavily populated by contingent faculty. The feminization of the field of composition in particular makes the work--and the potential solidarity between those on and off the…

There are two worlds that exist in the academe: a world where the tenure system remains strong and a world dominated by the absence of tenure. In this article, the author cites the differences between these two worlds. In a world where tenure remains strong, academic departments benefit from a stable, dedicated workforce composed of tenured and…

New faculty members are traditionally indoctrinated into a system that demands that they write incessantly and successfully publish their manuscripts. Yet they typically are not offered help in navigating the publishing process. For junior faculty members who have little experience with scholarly writing beyond their doctoral dissertations, these…

In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

Almost thirty years ago, Justice William Brennan saw clearly that American higher education was coming under the same pressures to "cut costs and increase efficiencies" to which market forces were subjecting businesses. Since Justice Brennan's observation, employers generally have sought to maximize their "flexibility' by creating a…

In the 1990s at Appalachian State University, as at many other colleges and universities, the balance shifted in the writing program. Before then, English composition courses had been taught by tenure-track faculty members, but now most composition courses are taught by non-tenure-track faculty members. In this article, the authors describe how…

These days, most newly hired faculty are appointed on a part-or full-time nontenure- track basis. The AAUP has reported that between 1975 and 2003, full-time tenure-track positions increased by only about 16 percent, while full-time non-tenure-track positions grew by 178 percent, and part-time appointment rose by 189 percent. Yet tenure…

Over the past few decades, the increase in contingent appointments--part- and full-time positions off the tenure track--has been dramatic. As of 2001, the most recent year for which U.S. Department of Education data are available, 44.5 percent of faculty appointments were part time. According to "Assessing the Silent Revolution: How Changing…

Many faculty members were optimistic about their economic prospects for 2004-05. They saw signs of--or at least hope for--economic recovery all around and were ending a year in which overall average faculty salaries had grown by the smallest percentage in decades. Following the pattern of recent years, this annual report first examines the…

The implications for the careers of junior faculty members of the trend toward creating tenure-track appointments that are tenure-track in name only, without any real security, are examined. (MSE)