Also this week: why you’re reading this blog post rather than doing whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, Alexander von Humboldt comic book graphic novel, and more.
From Jeremy:
Survey data on the determinants of faculty counter-offers and retention in the US. (ht a correspondent) The results that jumped out for me were the gender gaps: women are more likely to be denied a counteroffer when they ask for one, whereas men are much more likely to get a counteroffer without even asking for one. And women are much more likely to cite “spousal employment” as a primary factor in their decision to stay or leave. Unfortunately the data don’t seem to be published or described in detail anywhere I can find with casual searching, so I have no idea about sample size or possible sampling biases here. (From Meghan: I was going to link to this! I would also be really interested in a link to the full data if it’s available. Another statistic that stood out to me was that about 1/3 of people who left reported that they originally only sought an outside offer so that they could negotiate with their current institution. The statistics and general topic reminded me of Brian’s old post on whether deans make the same error as hen breeders.)
Terry McGlynn with some good practical ideas for how institutions can better encourage and support NSF GRF applications from their students. Seems like this post springs in part from Terry’s recent-ish move into administration; looking forward to learning more from his experiences on that front.
Back in 2013, famous Harvard business prof Clay Christensen predicted that “maybe half” of all US universities would be bankrupt within a decade, “including the state schools.” That…is not gonna happen. Shooting the Christensen-shaped fish in a barrel is just a hook for the linked piece to analyze interesting data on bankruptcies and mergers of US institutions of higher education. There has indeed been a huge wave of bankruptcies and mergers in the past few years–among for-profit institutions.
The Trump administration is ending funding for many Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, in defiance of Congress, which appropriated funding for them.
Alexander von Humboldt, the (nonfiction) graphic novel. Link goes to a review.
It me. 🙂
From Meghan:
This article on procrastination—and why it has nothing to do with self control—was really interesting to me, even though I don’t think of myself as a big procrastinator. It also seemed to resonate with lots of folks on twitter. One quote from the article: “Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.”
Dynamic Ecology 