Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. christopher ruth's avatar
  2. Mark's avatar

    In theory, the US retains a launch-on-warning *capacity* for the ICBMs. But I’m pretty sure they’re not on an actual…

  3. David Wallace's avatar

    On (4), and with the usual caveat that I’m not an expert here: The US has 400 land-based ICBMs, carrying…

  4. David Wallace's avatar

    In itself, not much. (A few quibbles: the estimates of deployed warheads are implausibly precise; the assessment of nuclear winter…

  5. LFC's avatar
  6. Rob's avatar
  7. Dan Schwarcz's avatar

Signs of the COVID times in the academy: cuts, cuts, cuts

At the University of Colorado, Boulder:  "[W]e propose to rebalance the ratio of tenure-track faculty to instructors. Currently, that ratio, by head count, is 3.3:1 (TTT to instructors). Reducing tenure-track faculty by 50 and adding 25 instructors would yield a new ratio of 2.8:1. Accounting for related savings, making this move would free $6.2 million annually."  [Instructors typically teach 4/4 loads, rather than 2/2 loads.]

At the University of Vermont:  The "plan would terminate majors including Geology, Religion, Asian Studies and several language programs such as Greek, Latin and German. Minors in many of these subject areas would also be cut, plus others in Theatre and Vermont Studies. Master’s programs to be cut include Greek & Latin and Teaching Latin, Geology and Historic Preservation.  The plan would wipe out the college’s Classics, Geology and Religion departments. Other departments would be consolidated."  Some tenure-stream faculty may lose their positions altogether.

ADDENDUM:  And wealthy private universities are offering financial incentives for faculty to retire.  Yale is offering up to 200K for faculty who retire by next summer, while I know Penn is offering two years of salary as a retirement incentive to certain senior faculty to retire by next summer (for faculty in the professional schools this could amount to 750K or more).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Designed with WordPress