The National Labor Relations Board issued three decisions Wednesday regarding religious colleges where faculty members have attempted to form unions and where administrators have objected, saying that their spiritual affiliation puts them outside of the board’s jurisdiction. In each decision -- regarding Seattle University, Saint Xavier University and Manhattan College, all of which are Roman Catholic -- the board remanded the case back to the NLRB regional directors to take appropriate action in light of the recent NLRB decision regarding Pacific Lutheran University.

In that case -- which many called a major win for unions and a blow to longstanding legal precedents challenging the right of tenure-line faculty members at private institutions and faculty members generally at religious institutions to freely form unions -- the board said adjuncts at Pacific Lutheran could form a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union. The board based its decision on its opinion that adjuncts at Pacific Lutheran didn't perform specific religious functions that might cause them to fall outside its jurisdiction and on the opinion that the faculty members lacked the managerial duties that might prevent them from forming a union.

Louisa Edgerly, an adjunct instructor of communications at Seattle, said the ruling appeared to be good news that brought the would-be union “one step closer” to finally being able to be count the union election votes that have been impounded as the university appeals a local NLRB decision in the adjuncts’ favor. William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said the orders appear to be largely procedural, but that it was “important to recognize that the NLRB could have chosen to decide the merits of the issues in each case based on record already before it, as it did in Pacific Lutheran. Instead, it has sent each case back to the regional director for further processing, which might result in additional briefing by the parties or the reopening of the record for the presentation of supplemental evidence and argument based on the standards set forth in Pacific Lutheran.”

In today's Academic Minute, Jessica Gall Myrick, a communications professor at Indiana University, explores the nature of celebrity influence over the population especially in terms of medical conditions. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.

A faculty panel has urged the board of the University of Illinois System to stop reviewing faculty appointments and to delegate that authority to senior campus administrators, The News-Gazette reported. The recommendation comes out of the controversy over Steven Salaita, whose hiring was blocked last year by senior administrators who did not believe that the board would approve him. Aside from the Salaita debate, faculty leaders said that the system did not work well in that new faculty members might be on campus teaching before the board officially approved their hire. Administrators have not endorsed the faculty recommendation, but have said that they too favor a streamlining of the process.

The budget proposal from Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, would eliminate the regulatory board that oversees the state's 244 for-profit institutions, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. The Education Approval Board sought tighter regulation of the sector two years ago, but that plan died quickly. Walker wants to cut the board to "decrease the regulatory and fiscal burden" on for-profits, according to the newspaper.