Showing 151 posts tagged faculty
“Some 74 percent of professors aged 49-67 plan to delay retirement past age 65 or never retire at all, according to a new Fidelity Investments study of higher education faculty. While 69 percent of those surveyed cited financial concerns, an even higher percentage of professors said love of their careers factored into their decision.”
AAUP Sees MOOCs as Spawning New Threats to Professors' Intellectual Property
Colleges broadly threaten faculty members’ copyrights and academic freedom in claiming ownership of the massive open online courses their instructors have developed, Cary Nelson, a former president of the American Association of University Professors, argued here on Wednesday at the group’s annual conference.
In the meeting’s opening address, Mr. Nelson characterized the debate at colleges over who owns the rights to faculty members’ MOOCs as part of a broader battle over intellectual property that’s being waged on America’s campuses. At stake, he said, is not just the ability of faculty members to profit from their own writings or inventions, but the future of their profession.
“If we lose the battle over intellectual property, it’s over,” Mr. Nelson warned. “Being a professor will no longer be a professional career or a professional identity,” and faculty members will instead essentially find themselves working in “a service industry,” he said.
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)
“Yet, far from a radical innovation, MOOCs are simply the natural extension of trends that have been at the heart of the modern university for decades. Defenders of the status quo are reminiscent of Casablanca’s Captain Renault, who is “shocked, shocked” to discover an activity in which he himself partook. In April, the philosophy department at San Jose State University published an open letter bashing the use of Michael Sandel’s MOOC, “Justice.” Those professors compared the situation to “something out of a dystopian novel.” (“Departments across the country possess unique specializations and character, and should stay that way,” they wrote.) Such rhetoric notwithstanding, faculties have been deeply invested in the logic leading to the rise of MOOCs, and are fundamentally ill-prepared to mount a serious intellectual argument against them.”
Harvard Professors Call for Greater Oversight of MOOCs
Several dozen professors in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have signed a letter to their dean asking for formal oversight of the massive open online courses offered by Harvard through edX, a MOOC provider co-founded by the university.
While “some faculty are tremendously excited about HarvardX,” the professors wrote, referring to the university’s brand within the edX platform, “other are deeply concerned about the program’s cost and consequences.”
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)
Florida Polytechnic U. to offer multi-year contracts, not tenure, to faculty
Florida Polytechnic University’s re-envisioning of a public research institution is making some radical departures from the norm, including scrapping the idea of tenure. The state’s union leaders, however, say that decision should be reversed if administrators are serious about their aspirations for the university.
Instead of tenure, faculty members “will be offered fixed term, multi-year contracts that will be renewed based on performance,” the university-to-be announced on Tuesday.
“We want to be a leading university, and we wanted to attract faculty who think out of the box, and who are ambitious and creative,” said Ghazi Darkazalli, vice president of academic affairs. “We don’t want them to be worrying within the first five or six years whether they’re going to be tenured or not.”
» via Inside Higher Ed
Duke faculty reject plan for it to join online consortium
Duke University faculty members, frustrated with their administration and skeptical of the degrees to be awarded, have forced the institution to back out of a deal with nine other universities and 2U to create a pool of for-credit online classes for undergraduates.
Duke’s Arts & Sciences Council, which represents faculty from Duke’s largest undergraduate college, voted 16-14 on Thursday against plans to grant credits to Duke students who would have taken online courses from the pool. The vote effectively killed Duke’s participation in the effort, and it immediately withdrew.
The courses were to be offered by Duke and other top-tier universities in a partnership organized by 2U, formerly known as 2tor. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOCs, only a few hundred students were expected to enroll in each course – which would feature a mix of recorded lectures and live discussions – but each course would be divided into sections of no more than 20 students led by an instructor, perhaps a graduate student. The effort, known as Semester Online, will go on without Duke and offer its first classes this fall, 2U’s CEO said.
» via Inside Higher Ed
Grading the MOOC University
The professor is, in most cases, out of students’ reach, only slightly more accessible than the pope or Thomas Pynchon. Several of my Coursera courses begin by warning students not to e-mail the professor. We are told not to “friend” the professor on Facebook. If you happen to see the professor on the street, avoid all eye contact (well, that last one is more implied than stated). There are, after all, often tens of thousands of students and just one top instructor.
Perhaps my modern history professor, Philip D. Zelikow, of the University of Virginia, put it best in his course introduction, explaining that his class would be a series of “conversations in which we’re going to talk about this course one to one” — except that one side (the student’s) doesn’t “get to talk back directly.” I’m not sure this fits the traditional definition of a conversation.
On the other hand, how can I really complain? I’m getting Ivy League (or Ivy League equivalent) wisdom free. Anyone can, whether you live in South Dakota or Senegal, whether it’s noon or 5 a.m., whether you’re broke or a billionaire. Professors from Harvard, M.I.T. and dozens of other schools prerecord their lectures; you watch them online and take quizzes at your leisure.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
High-res
The Ever-Shrinking Role of Tenured College Professors (in 1 Chart)
This doesn’t actually mean that there are fewer full-time professors today than four-decades ago. College faculties have grown considerably over the years, and as the AAUP notes, the ranks of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate are up 26 percent since 1975. Part-time appointments, however, have exploded by 300 percent. The proportions vary depending on the kind of school you’re talking about. At public four-year colleges, about 64 percent of teaching staff were full-time as of 2009. At private four-year schools, about 49 percent were, and at community colleges, only about 30 percent were. But the big story across academia is broadly the same: if it were a move, it’d be called “Rise of the Adjuncts.”
» via The Atlantic
Gap in University Faculty Pay Continues to Grow, Report Finds
For the academic elite — tenured professors at private research universities — average pay this year is $167,118, while at public research universities such professors earn $123,393, according to the annual report by the American Association of University Professors.
After three years in which overall increases in full-time faculty pay lagged behind the rate of inflation, this year’s average increase, 1.7 percent, kept pace with consumer prices.
But the difficult economic climate of recent years is taking a serious toll on higher education, especially public institutions. As states cut back their support for public institutions, the gap between the pay scales at private and public universities is continuing to grow, the report found. Average pay for assistant professors at private colleges that award only bachelor’s degrees is $62,763, while public colleges paid $58,591.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
As Role of Librarians Evolves, Some Colleges End Their Faculty Status
Librarians on many campuses have long been considered faculty, but some institutions are now reclassifying the position as a staff job as they reassess the role of their research libraries more broadly.
The move to take faculty and tenure status away from librarians has generated controversy and raised questions about whether their role should be narrowed and what the future of the job should be. Some administrators say the position must shift with the changing model for university libraries. But even though their role is changing, librarians say they belong on the faculty because they continue to support their campuses through research, scholarship, and teaching.
Last month the University of Virginia announced that all future librarians will be classified as university staff. The librarians are now considered non-tenure-track faculty, and current employees will retain that status.
And East Carolina University is weighing a plan that may strip its future librarians of faculty status, their ability to earn tenure, or both.
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)
