I said: Think about how she feels. She has a PhD, did a postdoc, wrote some high profile papers, but then took a technician job at the institution where her husband is a big professor. She’s good enough to have been a professor in her own right, but instead she spends her days helping others do their research, with no hope of advancing in her career.

My colleague looked puzzled. He said: She has nothing to complain about. She has a job and she and her husband live in the same place.

That’s when Female Science Professor realized that her colleague’s attitude might result from the fact that he, like plenty of other academics, had made the opposite, but no less difficult, choice.

My colleague and his wife live several hours apart owing to complicated job/family issues. His wife is not an academic, but it still has not been possible for them to live in the same place for the past few years. He was thinking of the situation from the point of view of ‘how lucky this couple is to be together in the same location’.

Still, that’s all the more reason why he should appreciate the technician’s plight, Female Science Professor writes:

The reason my colleague and his wife live apart is because each of them would be unhappy if they gave up their present job and look a less desirable job in their spouse’s current city of residence.

Perhaps living apart is so difficult that his instinctive reaction involves his wish to live in the same place as his wife, rather than first considering the reality of what that would involve if his wife quit her job, moved to his city, and took a job she didn’t like. I am sure he is well aware of that, but his longing to have his family together dominates his feelings and point of view.

In the case of the technician, she probably compromised her top career choice because she thought it would be best for all concerned, and that can’t have been an easy thing to do, FSP writes. Others would be wise to keep that in mind.

Tell us about the career/family compromises that you’ve faced.

“Kids aren’t like computer programs that run predictably. With more than two, there is always going to be someone who is sick or needy, and so something at work is going to have to give. If anyone told me they wanted three kids, I would be thinking, What, are you nuts?”

It’s no wonder women like Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum, a bioengineering professor at Rice University who runs a thriving cancer-research laboratory and is a mother of four, often feel like pariahs. In fact, Ms. Richards-Kortum told Wilson that she is most comfortable in her dual roles as professor and mother during the research trips she takes several times a year to southern Africa:

“Here I’m this weird, freaky person because I have four kids,” she says in Houston. “There I can establish rapport and credibility with people because big families are much more common. It’s the only time I feel like it’s a real professional advantage.”

Julianna Baggott, an associate professor with a stay-at-home husband and five children, knows the feeling. She keeps her kids somewhat under wraps, out of a concern that her colleagues may think less of her, Wilson notes:

She displays no photos of her children in her office in Florida State University’s English department, and she never tells colleagues that she can’t make a meeting because of the children, who range in age from 14 to 2. “I just say, ‘I’m sorry, I have a conflict,’” she says.

“Academia assumes that a woman, once she has kids, is not going to be able to maintain her career at the same level,” says Ms. Baggot, [who with 14 books under her belt and having just earned tenure can hardly be accused of slacking off].

Despite the negative attitudes towards big families, not to mention the very real challenges involved in having one, some academic women make it work. Read the whole story to see how they manage and share your experiences and advice here.

The scope of the college’s financial problems came to light in April, when Mr. Williams surprised faculty and staff members by announcing layoffs and a temporary, 20-percent pay cut across the board. Just last November, he had said that while the college was looking to trim expenses, it anticipated no layoffs and would go ahead with 2-percent raises planned for January.

According to the News & Record, a local newspaper, faculty leaders had been planning to call for a vote of no confidence in his leadership this week.

The supervisor’s response surprised her: “I would prefer for you to draft the letter for me to review and sign. I think you will know which skills and strengths will speak to your market more appropriately and effectively. Just send me the file when you’ve written it and I’ll take care of the rest.”

I thought about that story (which is true, by the way) when I read this post about a former lawmaker in Florida who wrote his own job description and contract for a plum position.

Such incidents make me wonder just how much ghostwriting actually is going on in higher education.

What rules should govern ghostwriting, whether related to positions, to letters of recommendation, or even to scholarship?

My Tenure’s for Sale. How About Yours?

Incentives and Institutions – Why Stop With the Banks?

When It Comes to Law Faculty, We’re All Post-Modernists

‘We All Contribute In Our Own Ways’ Is Not a Valid Institutional Goal

Elsewhere on Feminist Law Professors, Ann M. Bartow, a University of South Carolina law professor, is appalled that women continue to be paid less than men when women outperform men in college and earn more degrees:

You’d think with more degrees and better grades, women would be earning substantially more than men. But in fact the opposite is true. According to this site, “The ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly earnings for full-time workers was 79.9 in 2008, the third consecutive decline since the historical high of 81.0 in 2005.” So let me offer an explanation for why women enroll in colleges in higher numbers and earn higher grades once we are there: We have to. If we didn’t, the salary gap would grow even larger.

Meanwhile, over at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess …, Isis considers whether blogging is detrimental to a scientific career and concludes that it isn’t, provided you keep your priorities in order and your eye on the prize:

It’s phenomenal to contribute to the online discourse and to educate the public. I have a blast here and I do believe that there is value to the things I do here. However, when it comes to hiring and promotion and other career advancement-type things, unless your blog gets itself an impact factor overnight, its importance is trivial compared to the research dolla dolla bills y’all and the number of peer-reviewed publications you’ve amassed. It also means that if you are not achieving the career milestones you need to, your blogging can be viewed as an necessary distraction. That can hurt your career.

Finally, in a two-part series, Historiann shines a light on the disturbing frequency in which some (male and female) administrators interfere in the advancement of female faculty members and recounts her own run-in with the administrative patriarchy at her institution.

I still think that conference interviews have a lot of advantages. Meeting candidates face-to-face is, I believe, considerably more effective than talking to them on the phone. Simply being able to read their body language, make eye contact, and interact directly provides a clarity that isn’t available by phone. The intensity of the conference-interview process, while exhausting, gives hiring committees the opportunity to make direct comparisons between candidates, refine their impressions, and get a sense of the candidates’ interest in the position.

That said, I see good arguments for doing preliminary interviews by telephone instead. The most important is the cost to candidates, many of whom can ill afford the expense. When I started attending the MLA convention in the late 80s, conference hotel rooms were routinely less than $70 a night. Now they are pushing $200. Airfares were cheaper, as were meals. Conference fees were generally much less as well.

It’s one thing for candidates with multiple interviews to roll the dice by spending a lot of money to attend a conference for interviews, but it’s quite another to make that “investment” for only one or two interviews. Asking candidates to make a financial commitment to a conference well in advance of knowing if they will get any interviews is problematic, at least until airlines develop rational and fair refund policies (for which I shan’t hold my breath).

It also costs institutions a great deal of money to interview at conferences. Would that money be better spent on, say, professional-development activities or travels costs for conferences where the faculty members are themselves presenting? I can think of a lot of good arguments for those positions.

Given the changes in the academic market, which is increasingly competitive and hard to navigate, I suspect that institutions like mine should consider not engaging in the conference-interview process. I regret to say that, as I have learned a great deal from serving on interview teams at a number of MLA conventions, and have certainly enjoyed my visits to the various cities where they have been held. But the cost to candidates may well counterbalance the advantages of the process.

More than 300 four- and two-year colleges signed up for this year’s program, and 247 went through the entire survey process, nearly triple last year’s number of participants. The results, which were published today, are based on responses from nearly 41,000 administrators, faculty members, and staff members at those institutions.

The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For program recognizes colleges (grouped by enrollment size) for specific best practices and policies, including those affecting compensation and benefits, faculty-administration relations, and confidence in senior leadership. There are 26 recognition categories for four-year institutions, and 15 for community colleges.

Among four-year colleges, 122 institutions were recognized in at least one category. Among two-year institutions, 28 were recognized in at least one category.

Thirty-nine colleges were named to an Honor Roll, a new feature this year. The Honor Roll highlights the top 10 colleges in each size category (or the top three in the case of community colleges) based on the number of times they were recognized in the individual recognition categories. (A special report on the survey singles out four Honor Roll colleges and the best practices that earned them that distinction, as well as success stories on 12 other campuses.)

To participate in the program, institutions agreed to go through a free, two-part assessment process: a survey administered to a randomly selected group of 400 to 600 administrators and members of the faculty and professional-support staff, and an institutional audit that collected demographics and workplace policies and practices from each institution. The primary factor in deciding whether an institution received recognition was the employee feedback collected from faculty and staff members.

Read more here and here.

The state’s 12 community colleges, which lost more than 70 faculty members, are concerned that they may have to cap enrollments, just as record numbers of potential new students are turning to them for training.

The University of Connecticut also lost more than 70 professors, through the retirement program. Jeremy Teitelbaum, dean of its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, told the newspaper that while each department was making its own plans, most would probably meet course demand this fall by employing more adjunct professors and increasing some class sizes.

The four-campus Connecticut State University System lost more than 75 faculty members. The system hopes to maintain academic quality, a spokesman, Bernard Kavaler, said, by “doing more with less.”

Over all, the early retirements are expected to save the state at least $110-million a year as it struggles to close a projected $8.7-billion budget gap over the next two years.

This got me thinking about the amount of fashion posing that goes on in any profession; higher education certainly is not immune to this, from the grungy Marxist to the cuff-linked development officer to the seersucker-clad law professor to the presidential wannabe’s who wear those trendy rimless glasses. Most campuses have more than a few poseurs in their communities; likewise, we have enough free spirits to keep things interesting (I have fond memories of colleagues who have worn the occasional kilt and bathrobe around campus).

So, which fashion items drive you the craziest as you look around campus? Which do you secretly envy?