First-time community college presidents are typically chosen from the senior ranks of two-year colleges' administrations, so they know what the job entails to some extent--at least from a close secondhand perspective. Leaders of community colleges who have taken the reins in the mid-2010s say that a close secondhand view only goes so far in…

Increasingly, graduate and professional students arrive at institutions of higher education with personal and professional commitments to make the world a better place through community engagement; however, departments often do not incorporate outreach and engagement into graduate curricula (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; O'Meara & Jaeger,…

Just a few years ago, tenure appeared low on the reform list for state policy makers and district administrators, viewed as too hot an issue politically to challenge. But it was front and center in the 2014 landmark "Vergara v. California" lawsuit, which challenged teacher tenure and related policies. Yet whether to grant tenure or not…

America's colleges and universities have been moving slowly but steadily away from tenure over the past decade. The American Federation of Teachers reports that community colleges have seen a 22% increase in the number of instructional staff between 1997 and 2007. During that time, the percentage of community college faculty that were full-time…

The article presents a theoretical framework, "institutional phase theory", that charts the process by which higher education faculties in the USA were broadened by race, gender, and to a certain extent class over the past 40 years. Drawing upon institutional ethnographies of three very different universities--a top-ranked private…

Much has been written about higher education's increasing reliance on contingent academic labor over the last few decades. The narrative, which includes differing accounts of what, or who, is most to blame, has been well rehearsed: the increase came in slow and steady waves tied to significant political and economic events, including postwar…

This paper presents the Michigan edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's 2008 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook". The 2008 "Yearbook" focuses on how state policies impact the retention of effective new teachers. This policy evaluation is broken down into three areas that encompass 15 goals. Broadly, these goals…