It's the night before one of Javier Jimenez's big job interviews at the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting. The 35-year-old graduate student, who is scheduled to earn his Ph.D. in comparative literature this spring from the University of California at Berkeley, is trying to ward off anxiety and abdominal pains. The mystique of the MLA, the…

With many professors approaching retirement. a shortage of qualified academics has reached crisis proportions at a number of African universities. The shortfall is a consequence of decades of neglect of African higher education, as donors and governments concentrated limited resources on primary and secondary schools, and young scholars who manage…

More U.S. college students are enrolling in power- and energy-engineering courses, but the increase is not enough to meet the need, says a new report by the IEEE, the professional association of electrical engineers. About 45% of engineers at electric utilities are expected to retire or leave their jobs within five years, creating as many as…

Signs of a leadership crisis in community colleges have been building over the past decade, with one study predicting that as many as 84 percent of current presidents could retire within the next 10 years. Several plans of action are under way to handle this changing of the guard, including more leadership-preparation programs offered by such…

Universities are watching their state budgets crumble across the country: The University of Arizona has put a freeze on all state-financed hiring, Georgia's 14 technical colleges are being merged into seven, and New York will probably have to shelve a plan to create a $3-billion fund to attract cutting-edge research to the Empire State, which…

In this article, the author laments higher education's lack of concern towards the development of teaching in the public schools over the last half of the 20th century. Most of academe's work on the topic of teacher training has been done at the branches of state universities that needed to make money and create a niche. The author observes that…

Recent figures indicate that a 1970s pattern among universities of adding new layers to administrative staffs continued through the 1980s. The 28.1 percent increase in nonteaching staff in five years compares with an increase of 8.6 percent for faculty and an overall increase of 12.8 percent during the same period. However, institutions are now…

The job openings for college English and second-language faculty advertised through the Modern Language Association have increased by 50 percent over the 1984 number and include more full-time, tenure-track positions as contrasted with lecturer and instructor openings. (MSE)

An expected wave of retirements has some institutions stockpiling professors by hiring them before openings occur, while many colleges and universities worry about the dwindling supply of high-quality faculty candidates. (MSE)

Tighter budgets faced by many higher education institutions have a variety of results, including larger classes, loss of faculty expertise through early retirement and nonreplacement, severely limited supplies and services, reduced faculty professional travel and memberships, and unrepaired equipment. Some faculty have begun fund-raising efforts.…

Among highlights of a 1990 report, "Campus Trends" by the American Council on Education are evidence for a decreasing academic labor pool, differences in opinions of administrators of two- and four-year institutions concerning benefits of assessment, and greater numbers of administrators rating faculty staffing as a top concern. (DB)

Discusses implications for colleges and universities of the coming retirement of the cohort of faculty brought in to teach the baby boomers. Notes both positive and negative financial impacts, effects of the greater amounts of wealth held by senior faculty on their decisions, and an increasing diffusion in retirement ages. (DB)

In sciences, postdoctoral fellowships have become the terminal academic credential for a research career. Positions are supposed to be temporary, but amount to a holding pattern for many unable to find permanent jobs in research or needing to assemble the required publishing record. Some institutions are beginning to acknowledge this problem and…

Many associations representing academic disciplines say the number of job openings listed in their publications has increased in the last year or two, and more job interviews are taking place at their annual meetings. There is also an apparent increase in applications to doctoral programs. (MLW)

Colleges and universities are reporting more available tenure-track jobs. However, because of the lack of such jobs during the 1990s, it may not bring much relief to the profession. New Ph.D.'s are competing with the many doctoral recipients who have spent years in temporary teaching and research jobs hoping to obtain a tenure-track position. (MSE)