Higher Education Quick Takes

Marc Hauser, a prominent Harvard University psychology professor whose research has come under scrutiny, has resigned, The Boston Globe reported. An internal investigation found that he committed multiple instances of scientific misconduct, one paper he published was retracted and two others were corrected -- but many observers have pushed for more details on the nature of what was incorrect in his work. Hauser was not available for comment on his resignation, which was confirmed by a university spokesman.

Moody's Investors Service published two reports Tuesday that underscore the ratings agency's perception of a growing divide between the fortunes of wealthy private colleges -- and the rest. The more substantive of the two reports, which are available only to Moody's clients, focuses on "divergent credit trends" and finds that institutions that were highly dependent on tuition and "weaker market positions" were more likely than "high-reputation institutions" to experience declines in the agency's ratings metrics. A second report on private gifts anticipates a continued rebound in donations in 2011, but mostly benefiting "“highly rated, market-leading universities."

Iran's higher education minister is studying plans that would separate men and women at the country's universities, The National reported. At most universities today, men and women attend the same classes, but sit in separate rows -- a degree of separation that falls far short of what some religious leaders are advocating. Ayatollah Safi Golpaigani said last week: "Mingling of male and female [students] thwarts scientific achievements and causes great corruption. The costs of segregation [for the government] are affordable however heavy they may be."

The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia, which represents more than 10,000 faculty members at universities, colleges, institutes and private sector institutions in that province, recently adopted a new statement of bargaining principles. The statement follows a wave of conversions of several area colleges into universities, which "has brought with it pressures to convert working conditions to the stratified tenure, non-tenure track realities of many old-line universities in Canada," an e-mail last week from at-large executive committee member Frank Cosco to union members read. "Conditions which seem to be the norm in the US."

The new set of principles was adopted at the union's general meeting in May but not distributed to many adjuncts until last week. It calls for bargaining policies to be based on a "collectivist, egalitarian, and equitable university workplace model as opposed to a competitive, stratified model of employment." More specifically, the principles embrace -- for both full- and part-time faculty members -- broad access to tenure and academic freedom regardless of the number of hours they work on a given campus, job protection and a single salary scale. Many adjunct faculty members in the U.S. chafe at their uncertain status in each of these areas.