"Teaching, Tenure, and Collegiality" espouses the concept of relationality--the idea that people's activities necessarily emerge through contextual engagement with others--as an alternative to the "publish or perish" ethos in higher education. Building on research by comparative philosophers, Mary K. Chang constructs a concept…

The authors of this article introduce a database of scholarship among liberal arts college (LAC) economists. Capturing publications across the life cycle, the data speak to questions unexplored in existing work and point to answers often contrary to popular wisdom. First, limited evidence of a rising tenure bar is found. Moreover, while some claim…

In Ireland state funded support services provide Continuing Professional Development for teachers and school leaders. These services are staffed with teachers seconded from their schools on an annual basis for a maximum of five years. This study investigated the learning and experience of teachers seconded to a national support service, the…

This brief explores the state of the full-time health professions faculty workforce by examining: overall growth in the number of full-time health professions faculty relative to all other disciplines; the percentage of full-time positions that are non-tenure-track versus tenure-track; faculty composition in the health professions compared to all…

Overall trends of academic staffing in the US have indicated declines in tenure, increased use of contingent faculty, and stratification of teaching and research efforts. However, little is known about academic staffing patterns in professional programs, and little research has been done using program-level data. The purposes of this study were to…

There has been a documented shortage of nursing and allied healthcare professionals in the healthcare workforce. The clinical workforce is supplied by nursing and allied health programs, and the faculty for nursing and allied health come from experienced and qualified clinicians. Therefore, shortages in the clinical healthcare workforce and…

Most tenure-line professors have heard and experienced the anxiety-causing "publish or perish" initiation rites in the world of higher education. Fresh Ph.D. graduates going into the professoriate often worry and agonize over this grueling process. However, one of the most central missions of many Tier 2 universities in the U.S. isn't…

This article presents new quasi-experimental evidence regarding the effectiveness of teaching-oriented faculty with tenure-track appointment, a model pioneered at the University of California (UC) system. Using data from six cohorts of students at a UC campus, we examine the impact of initial course-taking with three distinct types of…

Context: Tenure-earning faculty are evaluated in 3 primary areas including teaching, research and scholarship, and service. Struggles regarding earning tenure are not unique to the academe, but within the athletic training discipline concerns do exist. Objective: We examined the organizational socialization process for junior athletic training…

What is credible and actionable evidence can vary by program discipline in the Cooperative Extension Service. Through a series of interviews with program leadership from Agriculture, Natural Resources, Youth Development, Family Development, and Community Vitality, a case study of one state's Extension system is described. While programs certainly…

National and international statistics show that across disciplines there are many more PhD graduates than academic positions. In fact, more than half of graduates find their careers outside the academy--though the kinds of positions they accept, their work satisfaction, and the relevance of their PhDs is much less clear. As regards scholarly…

To stem the tide of new professionals leaving teaching, the Oceanside School District in New York created a program that sees teaching as a six-year career ladder beginning with an internship and ending with National Board Certification, with board-certified teachers supporting new interns and residents.

Ask any tenure-stream or tenured faculty member about how well prepared he or she was for entering the academy, and you will get a clear sense of a lack of preparation. One estimate is that only about 50 percent received any training for university teaching. To compound the problem, universities prepare most doctoral students to become…

Kimball begins this essay by comparing the start of the "golden age" of liberal arts education as the period between about 1950 and 1975 when American higher education's revenue and enrollments of colleges and universities grew enormously. During the subsequent silver age of academe, ending in the Great Recession of 2008-2009,…

Developments in the academic world--particularly among research universities--have been pushing US institutions of higher education towards structures and practices that defy the very values of equity and quality they profess to uphold. This is evident in the increasing quantification of scholarly productivity as well as in the growing division of…