Academics often view intercourse with business as a dirty, unchaste affair. Yet in some realms of activity, academic institutions practice greater virtue not by rebuffing corporate interests but by being in bed with them. Cross-sector social partnership, one of the terms of art applied to this sort of interbreeding, offers a potent means of…

In a recent issue of "Academe," Stephanie Goodwin and Susanne Morgan point out that faculty members with chronic illness are likely to find current accommodation procedures unhelpful, both because they might choose to remain silent rather than risk the stigma of disclosing a disability and because accommodations often do not meet their…

Public universities are not for-profit businesses with an easy-to-understand bottom line: their financial reports are not designed to convey information to the public fully or to reflect all the costs of teaching and research. Financial reports do track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, but they do not…

In a little rural town of ten thousand in the high desert of Utah, three big institutions run the local economy: the school district, the hospital, and the College of Eastern Utah, a two-year institution with a central campus and several small, even more rural satellite campuses throughout the state. It is the smallest college in Utah. When the…

When "crisis" and "extramural funding" are mentioned, most academics think about problems such as the low percentage of proposals funded by federal agencies (now approaching single digits in many fields) or inadequate indirect-cost recovery rates that fail to reimburse universities for all costs of research. These are great problems draining…

Florida has been one of the states hit hardest by the recent financial crisis. Since 2007, Florida State University (FSU) administration says, the university's budget has been cut by over $38 million. The state budget approved by the legislature on May 8, 2009, requires FSU to make another cut of more than $43 million from the institution's…

As faculty and administrators at federally designated "Hispanic serving institutions" (defined as colleges and universities having a minimum Latino student population of 25 percent), the authors came together in part because of the lack of research on the experiences of undocumented students, particularly in the Midwest; their own…

Describes concerns within the academic community on the use of collegiality as a factor in decisions concerning faculty employment, promotion, tenure, and termination. Such concerns include discrimination and stifling of dissent. Discusses how courts have decided in favor of universities in almost every discrimination case in which collegiality…

Although some consider electronic publishing to be the wave of the future, publishers must first build an infrastructure of citations, copyrights, authentication, and preservation to make it work well. Consistency is a crucial consideration in making information and documents accessible, and significant resources must be dedicated to archiving…

Every college and university experiences some form of financial hardship at one time or another. The financial problems plaguing local and state governments in recent years have been sufficient by themselves to create serious problems for institutions across the country. At the very least, an institution's financial difficulties can lead to the…

The uncertainty of the tax treatment of faculty accepting a temporary visiting position that becomes indefinite is discussed, and related issues including salary differentials, salary types such as fellowships, traveling and living expenses, home residence considerations, and related tax benefits are outlined. (MSE)

The state of nuclear war education in the college curriculum is briefly discussed, and a successful interdisciplinary course is described. Readings are listed for each course emphasis: nuclear science and weapons; consequences of their use; visions and nightmares; paths toward war: language, psychology, and politics; and paths toward peace. (MSE)

In Democracy in America, nineteenth-century political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville argued that understanding how individual U.S. states approached an issue offered "the key to all the rest." If Tocqueville was correct, and he was right about many things, higher education advocates are in for a rocky time. Over the past two or three…

Increased appreciation of the commercial value of intellectual property has triggered a major debate on college campuses, focusing on two issues: ownership of intellectual property and use of copyrighted works in teaching and research. Because these raise faculty-rights issues, faculty must identify its claims and interests clearly and make itself…

A summary of the 1982 Sonoma State University case of dismissal of 24 tenured faculty members for financial reasons provides background regarding financial exigency, faculty participation in decisions leading to the layoff, provision for individual hearings, notice, efforts to reinstate and relocate, and teaching service areas. (MSE)