Hiring

PHILADELPHIA -- Already down hundreds of job openings, the Modern Language Association discovered, at its annual meeting here, that it was also down hundreds of graduate students.

Attendance dropped from the 8,000s to the 7,000s -- and much of the drop appeared to be among those entering the profession. With convention job interviews thin on the ground, many grad students and new Ph.D.'s found somewhere else to go in the week after Christmas.

Just about any discussion of academic hiring these days, after the natural focus on the tight market, tends to come around to the issue of "dual career" hires or "partner accommodations." Most colleges say that they take the issue seriously and work hard to find positions for the partners of those being recruited. But what's the right way to do so?

WASHINGTON -- The field of political science is sometimes criticized as being too theoretical and not focused enough on real world problems. While there is still plenty of talk of theory and simulation at this year's annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, the overall theme is very much about the real world: "The Politics of Hard Times." There are sessions on hard times and the developing world, hard times in North America, courts and hard times, migration and hard times, national interest and hard times, and more.

Christopher Newport U. is basing faculty selections in part on whether applicants attended institutions that were rated highly by U.S. News.

Several major for-profit colleges make senior hires of officials with long histories in nonprofit higher education.

National data show growth in faculty positions and stagnation in administrative jobs in all sectors, though increases of instructors are mostly among adjuncts.

Even in down economy, University of Virginia finds clever way to hire cadre of promising faculty who will replace retiring longtime professors.

Research finds that letters of recommendation for women seeking faculty jobs tend to include "communal" or "emotive" words that -- even if used positively -- turn off search committees.

Open positions in history suffer another sharp decline, while searches in economics see a strong rebound.

Researchers in Spain, using rare opportunity to study randomly selected hiring and promotion panels, find gender split affects who gets full professor (but not associate) positions.