A college's first line of defense against employees' making insinuating remarks, unwanted sexual advances, or requests for sexual favors is often about an hour of online sensitivity training. Some people, however, wonder if that line is strong enough. According to a 2006 survey of undergraduate students by the American Association of University…

In research universities, those faculty members who write and obtain grant proposals enjoy certain perks, including summer salaries, more travel, more space, and an extensive list of other benefits, great and small. As one of the author's professors pounded into his head years ago, "A great teacher is known all over the campus. A great researcher…

The number of colleges freezing faculty hiring seems to grow each week. Yet some institutions are going against the grain of the poor economy and appointing new professors. This decision has given those campuses an edge, yielding top-quality candidates who might not have been within reach in a more-competitive job market. In the nation's few flush…

Something is wrong with tenure, and one needs to make it right. Abolishing it is not feasible, but it doesn't mean that one shouldn't at least consider changing some of the ways that tenure works. In this article, the author proposes that a better way to change tenure is to offer an implied contract of about 30 years. A 30-year contract would…

In light of a decision by members of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences to make access to their scholarly papers free, advocates of open access celebrated, but some publishers expressed concern. Members of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to provide the university with copies of their published articles and…

This article reports on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) public-access policy, which requires that agency-financed research results be made publicly available within 12 months of publication. The policy, which went into effect in April 2008, came under assault last year when Rep. John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, introduced the Fair…

In 2007 the faculty at Miami Dade College joined the student body in signing a covenant "to build a foundation for the success of future students." The event capped a two-year effort on the part of the faculty to articulate the foundations of a 21st-century college education and codify them into 10 clear statements. However, creating a…

At a time when intelligence agencies have never been more important, universities are teaching and studying just about everything else. In 2006 only four of the top 25 universities offered undergraduate courses on intelligence agencies or issues. Scholarly inattention is equally glaring in academic publishing. Between 2001 and 2006, the three most…

In this article, the author explains why Grants.gov, a web site for US Federal Government grants, should be abolished. Her recent attempt to submit a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health is a case in point. She recounts how frustrating her experience was to the grant-submission process of Grants.gov. She points out that Grants.gov…

Reports of swine flu have led some colleges to pull students and faculty members out of Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, and to cancel study-abroad programs there. But even as the number of new cases appears to be falling, the health scare offers some lasting lessons for colleges, says Gary Rhodes, director of the Center for Global Education…

During a period of financial difficulty, presidents and chief financial officers can be tempted to restrict the flow of information and to discuss financial exigencies only with senior staff members, so that board members and people throughout the campus do not become worried. However, it is better to get the facts out rather than to allow…

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the political makeup of academe may be changing. In 2005 more than 54 percent of full-time faculty members in the United States were older than 50, compared with just 22.5 percent in 1969. Patricia Cohen, a reporter for the "Times," couples that with another intriguing fact: Recent studies…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 50 percent of undergraduates work in part-time jobs while enrolled as full-time students. Student employment, says the author, has the potential to be a significant developmental experience, providing an extracurricular setting in which to promote learning after class ends, enabling…

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the ambitious $10-billion research institution that Saudi Arabia plans to open in 2009, has signed agreements with three leading universities to help it design a curriculum and hire faculty members. The agreements, with Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the…

This article takes a look at the rising popularity of professors as the latest YouTube stars. The popularity of their appearances on YouTube and other video-sharing sites is making it possible for classrooms to be opened up and making teaching--which once took place behind closed doors--a more public art. Web video has generated a new form of…