Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Missing the Obvious

Heather Barbour at Athene provides a pdf link to recent report from the American Political Science Association. Heather describes herself as a “political analyst, writer, and college professor,” and in yesterday’s post laments the recommendation that “was not” made by the APSA to hire adjunct staff when tenured positions do come available. She writes:

Only 24 percent of full-time, tenured political science faculty is women. However, an increasing number of women, and decreasing number of men, are teaching adjunct or in non-tenured positions.

No surprise there.


What is really surprising is what the report *did not* recommend as a means to fill the gap: giving adjunct faculty first shot at full-time tenured positions. In other words, hire from within and use your adjunct pool, which we know has plenty of women in it, as a kind of apprenticeship program instead of as a temp agency.

The recommendations they do make -- about encouraging more women in graduate school, making research more collaborative, etc. -- are all fine, but you can tell they've been made by people who never had to do a strategic (SWAT) analysis. I don't doubt these things will help, but geez, talk about missing the obvious.



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