Suchergebnisse

One common thread that runs through almost every higher ed department is that the entire operation requires long and irregular hours, extending from the traditional workday into nights and weekends. The collective commitment of all employees to do their respective part enables each department to accomplish its varied missions. This approach is often demonstrated by the willingness of dedicated employees to work long hours well in excess of 40 hours per week. Although that commitment of extra time and effort is acceptable for many employees within the department who are considered exempt from wage‐related overtime payment obligations, higher ed administrators must tread carefully regarding expecting any additional time or effort from nonexempt hourly staff. One university recently learned this lesson the hard way.

The recent college admissions scandal rocked the celebrity world and caused unpleasant and unexpected pain and suffering at several athletics departments, admissions offices, and universities. The initial disclosure of it was all the more startling and headline‐grabbing when it became instantaneous national news at an FBI press conference. Fraud of any type associated with the admissions process is a serious concern, and this scheme has so far resulted in arrests, indictments, and potential prison time for the individuals involved. The fact that certain individuals were able to come up with a scheme that led to their family members being successfully admitted into universities has also evoked feelings of anger, outrage, indignation, and fundamental unfairness. For the universities associated with the reported cases, they're dealing with the public relations backlash, reputational damage, and ongoing questions on how these situations could have arisen in the first place.

The most egregious Title IX violations seem to occur at colleges and universities that fail to designate a Title IX coordinator or neglect to provide the appropriate level of authority to the person serving in that position.

ObjectiveThis article investigates changes in confidence in legal authorities associated with mass incarceration.MethodsBinary logistic regression models are used to analyze five waves of data from a national survey of U.S. adults collected between 1981 and 2011 (n = 8,548). Predicted probabilities and discrete change coefficients are calculated to examine changes in blacks' and whites' attitudes about police and courts associated with changes in the incarceration rate.ResultsAs the incarceration rate grew, blacks' confidence in police declined substantially, while whites' was unchanged. Blacks and whites each lost confidence in courts as incarceration increased. However, the loss was significantly greater among blacks than whites.ConclusionsThe growing incarceration rate was accompanied by distinctive shifts in blacks' and whites' confidence in legal authorities. This article underscores the importance of macro legal contexts for understanding race differences in legal confidence.

ObjectiveThis article investigates the role of organizations in the construction of expert authority by examining legal disputes about the credibility of expert witnesses who work for consulting firms, in academia, and in private practice offices and clinics.MethodsI analyzed 472 deliberations of expert witness credibility summarized in judicial opinions from civil rights, patent infringement, and medical malpractice cases in U.S. district courts. Binary logistic regressions tested whether lawyers' challenges to experts' credibility or judges' decisions to admit or exclude experts' testimony differed according to experts' organizational location.ResultsChallenges to experts' credibility and decisions about their admissibility reflected the organizational context of experts' labor. Overall, consultants were most likely and private practitioners were least likely to overcome credibility challenges and be admitted into court.ConclusionsLegal negotiations of experts' credibility depend on their organizational location. This suggests that organizations may also shape the attribution of expertise in other settings.

Coauthored scholarship increased substantially across fields of science during the twentieth century, but it is unclear whether this growth reflects change in the behavior of individual scientists (i.e., career aging) or publishing differences between cohorts of researchers (i.e., cohort succession). I examine the publication records of an interdisciplinary sample of university scientists and find evidence of both career-aging and cohort-succession processes, although cohort differences are much more pronounced than individual changes. Specifically, scientists in this sample increased the percentage of their articles with coauthors by 0.63 percentage points annually. However, compared to those who received their PhDs between 1953 and 1962, scientists who entered the workforce between 1983 and 1991 coauthored approximately one third more of their early career articles (35.63 percentage points). Additionally, career-aging processes in coauthorship varied by PhD cohort, with earlier trained researchers increasing more rapidly. Overall, this article highlights cohort succession as a source of change in coauthorship, and underscores the importance of accounting for generational differences in studies of scientific careers.

Opposition to and skepticism of science have important social consequences, as highlighted by contemporary debates about vaccines and climate change. Recent studies suggest that opposition to science is rooted in moral concerns and reflects a belief that science breaks down traditional conceptions of right and wrong. This article turns attention to the education system and to national contexts to examine how people see science as a moral threat. We analyze data from the World Values Survey using multilevel regression models and find that individuals with higher levels of education are less concerned about the effects of science on morality. Yet, education differences in moral concern about science are more than twice as large in countries with the highest levels of scientific investment compared to those with the lowest. We conclude that although the link between education and the moral consequences of science is not limited to specific countries, its intensity varies across national contexts. We discuss these findings in light of recent scholarship on political and religious opposition to science, noting the importance of understanding publics' views of the moral consequences of science.