Identifies a number of centrifugal pressures currently splintering universities which raise questions about academia's sense of community. Uses the analogy of smashing the atom to explore these pressures. Cites increasing numbers of temporary and contract workers which brings about a division of labor that affects the nature of academic discourse…

A long-time teaching assistant and now adjunct faculty member at a major university looks at the forces both for and against unionization on campus and under state law, the theoretical but not practical support of faculty and administration, the value of unions for teaching assistants, and the nature of the graduate student-college relationship.…

In a college accounting course, two faculty members experimented with a new approach to office hours, with all communication between students and teachers other than classroom dialog. Through electronic mail and other methods of data transmission. This included distribution of course syllabus, reading lists, study materials, and exams, and…

A survey of 494 faculty in 4 disciplines at 4 Ontario universities found that quantity rather than nature of academic work was stressful. Teaching was the least stressful of work functions and research the most, particularly in the humanities. Hours spent on the job and tasks with a time constraint were significant sources of stress, as was rank…

As community college faculty become more involved with online courses, questions are emerging about pedagogy, workload, intellectual property, and a number of other issues. This chapter examines how the online environment has affected faculty work life.

This article focuses on how the institutional contexts of colleges and universities shape these "greedy institutions." We look at the current social, political, and economic trends affecting all postsecondary institutions, specifically the forces that encourage "greediness." We examine the literature on structural arenas that influence teaching in…

In this article, the author discusses issues involving women in higher education related to the promotion and tenure process. Institutions of higher education have always had the freedom to decide who may teach, what may be taught, and how it will be taught. As a result, courts have been reluctant to become involved in academic matters. One…

This case presents an educational leader attempting to institute cultural change in a university department that has long been marked by turbulence, turmoil, and trauma. The case examines the well-intentioned efforts of the newly appointed department chair, John Nitsky, in his quest to "reculture" the department. (Contains 2 notes.)

Instructors are a key component of any successful facilitated, asynchronous online course. They are tasked with providing the infrastructure for learning; modeling effective participation, collaboration, and learning strategies; monitoring and assessing learning and providing feedback, remediation, and grades; troubleshooting and resolving…

The contemporary academic labor market is examined using concepts from labor market economics and sociology to elucidate why teaching, universally acknowledged to be at the center of American academic life, is not at the center of the academic labor market and is only modestly rewarded. First, tenets of the neoclassical labor market model are…

As part of its Priorities, Quality, and Productivity (PQP) initiative, the Illinois State Board of Higher Education asked institutions to address issues associated with faculty roles and responsibilities. This paper describes the statewide information collected, how the data are used in Board reports, and how improved data collection might…

This report contains fiscal year (FY) 1997 data on compensation received by employees in the 49 public community colleges in the Illinois Community College System. Data tables are first provided on contractual base salaries for full-time faculty; salary rates for part-time faculty, full-time faculty overload, and summer term; salary schedules for…

This study of faculty stress used data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) survey administrated in the 1992-93 academic year. The total data set includes survey information from more than 43,000 faculty at nearly 300 higher education institutions in the United States. For this study, data for 29,064 full-time teaching faculty were…

In fall 1996, the University and Community College System of Nevada (UCCSN) undertook a study of the workload of full-time instructional faculty employed during the semester. Surveys were sent to 1,479.3 full-time equivalent faculty requesting information on the average amount of time per week devoted to teaching, research, and service activities.…

This paper addresses difficult issues in evaluation of college faculty for scholarship, teaching, and service particularly noting areas that trouble faculty themselves. A section on evaluation of teaching notes long standing debate and disagreement. This section then lists many of the central questions around evaluation of teaching and notes that…