In response to my previous entry about our recent hiring activities, one commenter asked several salient questions about the conduct of our searches in response to the changed conditions I describe in that entry:

"I have some questions for the author: with so few jobs for so many applicants, and many candidates applying for positions they don't really want, are those applicants easy to spot during the screening process? Has anyone like that made it all the way to campus interview stage? Would you rule out an otherwise stellar candidate who seemed lukewarm about the position or institution?"

These are excellent and difficult questions, and they deserve a careful answer. Having said that, I would also caution, in advance, that I'm operating from a fairly small data set, though I do have a number...

Given the state of the job market, many academics are reflecting on rejection these days. In this enlightening thread on the Chronicle Forums, academics on both sides of the table debate which medium — phone, e-mail, or letter — is best for rejecting finalists and receiving the bad news.

barred_owl, for one, thinks a phone call is the way to go because ...

(1) it's faster, and (2) it's more personal. After all, the committee spoke to you in person, probably had dinner with you, etc. You were one of 3-4 invited for a face-to-face interview, so there may be some sense of obligation to deliver the news more...

• C.L. Max Nikias, provost of the University of Southern California, has been chosen to lead the institution starting in August, The Ticker reports. He replaces the longtime president, Steven B. Sample.

• The faculty union at the University of Vermont has filed a grievance on behalf of five female assistant clinical professors of nursing, who say the institution pays its female professors less than it does their male peers, the Associated Press reports.

• Ekow Hayford, a former business professor at Stillman College, is suing it for wrongful termination, claiming that he was sacked in April 2008 in retaliation for...

The summer after my junior year of high school, my family made a pilgrimage to the three universities on my dream list. Each institution arranged for us to meet with a faculty member in my likely major. The professor at the first visit was arrogant and condescending; I didn't like him at all. The second visit was better, not exactly a warm and fuzzy meeting, but there was some rapport there. The third visit was fantastic. The professor was friendly, affirming of my interests, and made me feel like he wanted me in that program. I suppose you can figure out which institution I chose to attend. My experience in the classroom with that professor was excellent as well; he challenged me at every turn, pushing me to achieve more than I had ever dreamed possible.

I think back on those visits each time I meet with families of prospective students at my institution. We try to...

Earlier this year (it seems long ago), I promised to provide updates on this year's searches. That promise has proved more difficult to keep than I'd anticipated, as I've found it very difficult to discuss searches in a productive way while they are going on. We've now concluded three of our five projected searches, and restructured one of the others, so I have a little more latitude.

The three searches we've finished are in management, economics, and composition. The composition search was continued from last year, so it's probably the most instructive with regard to what's happening on the market in the current economic situation. As I've mentioned numerous times, we don't always get pools as large as institutions in more obviously compelling locations. Last year in the composition search that was definitely true—we received around 40 applications. They were...

A recent article about a Harvard study on Generation X faculty members has created some buzz on the Internet this week. The study includes this observation from a participant: "[Gen X] is much less formal. When people in their fifties started out, there was much more distance between faculty and students. If you were meeting with a student, it was for strictly academics and business purposes. ... [In contrast, my colleague] down the hall (born in 1966) has always got students in his office. He plays tennis with them. It’s just a completely different relationship ..." (page 4).

That observation reminded me of a confession I once heard from a colleague some years ago.

Since my previous entry about my late former colleague Robert Dana, I've had several interesting conversations with colleagues, friends, and the president emeritus of a distinguished liberal-arts college about the apparent disappearance, or at least the increasing scarcity, of professors like Robert Dana on the small-college scene.

I'm a graduate of a liberal-arts college that at the time had about 1,350 students. I served on the faculty of a slightly smaller liberal-arts college for 10 years, and am now at an institution that has about 900 students on the campus. In total, I've spent 16 of the past 28 years at such small institutions. I have been taught by and worked with a lot of small-college professors.

The kind of liberal-arts-college professors whose disappearance I lament have a number of...

We are entering into contract season, which means that many faculty members are learning the results of their tenure applications. The timing of the news varies widely, but at many institutions this news coincides with the offer of a contract for the following year: either a shiny new "tenured faculty" notice or a "terminal status" letter. The same is true for those at midtenure review; they learn about green-light or flashing-yellow-light status.

For those who receive bad news, the job market is looming anew. This is stressful and daunting, to say the least. The reasons behind a denial of tenure or a poor midterm assessment may be manifold, but certainly many quality faculty members find themselves facing such a status. Between departmental politics, personal complications, and other factors, the promise of scholarship or prowess in the classroom can be undercut by other...

A recent blog entry, on whether the tenure (or, for that matter, hiring) process can be considered fair if the bar for many of today's junior professors is higher than it was for some of the senior professors passing judgment on them, generated some interesting responses.

According to one respondent, supertatie, what ails the tenure process isn't rising requirements, but those people who treat it like a popularity contest:

The system is questionable, not because those using it wouldn't now satisfy it, but because it has become what it was intended to protect faculty from: a blunt instrument of power held in the hands of a few [...] to keep out people [they] don't like, whether their work is satisfactory or not. It has become like the "intellectuals'"...

My recent post on changes in the laws regarding textbook orders caused me to think about the love-hate relationship that most faculty members have with textbook companies. I suppose that most of us harbor a secret desire to write the definitive textbook for our field, something like Irving M. Copi's Introduction to Logic (originally published in 1953, now in its 13th edition) or Friedrich Klaeber's Beowulf (first published in 1922, now in its fourth, heavily supplemented edition), but those lightning strikes are exceedingly rare, and for most of us, we are limited to assigning textbooks in accordance with posted policies.

The reality is that textbooks are one of those shadow realms in academe: We have textbook buyers who visit campus with great wads of cash in their pockets; we have new...