This annual report contains six essays on current issues in higher education and a faculty salary report for 1996-97. The essays include: (1) "Faculty Salaries, 1996-97" (Suzanne B. Clery and John B. Lee), which notes that faculty salaries increased 3.1 percent for the year although the gap between the best- and lowest-paid faculty widened as did the gender gap; (2) "Faculty Workload and Productivity: Gender Comparison" (Henry L. Allen), which finds that women devote more time to teaching and less to research and are disproportionately in lower academic ranks, in public community colleges, and in part-time positions; (3) "Legal Regulation of Collective Bargaining in Colleges and Universities" (Gregory M. Saltzman), which documents the evolution, current status, and future of laws governing bargaining by full- and part-time faculty, teaching assistants, and support staff in higher education; (4) "1997 State Higher Education Finance and Policy Developments" (William Zumeta), which notes that while state appropriations for higher education have increased during the past two years, competition from other government services remains strong; (5) "Faculty Benefits: Identifying Family Friendly Campuses" (Jay L. Chronister) finds institutions are responding to changes in the college and university workforce by changing their benefits and examines trends in expenditures for benefits; and (6) "The Hidden Campus Workforce: (De)Investing in Staff" (Gary Rhoades and Christine Maitland), which examines the effects of the increasing amount of privatization of services traditionally performed in-house and analyzes current union contract provisions. The institutional faculty salary report provides salary and compensation data for 3,047 institutions. The data are organized by state, institutional type, and control, and are based on preliminary data from the Department of Education. (Each essay contains references.) (DB)