I recently saw an article about Donetsk National University (now a decade into relocation to western Ukraine) expecting a massive increase in enrollment due to students wanting to avoid the main cities. So all you need to do is have Russia invade your country and send drones and missiles willy-nilly and you can see your enrollment climb too! Definitely NOT worth it.

In case you are interested, DonNU does have several open positions. Even if you can stand the constant missile alerts, I don't think you'd like the salaries. A full professor might earn US$20k at the top. I do hope they can win their fight and restore their universities.

Started work middle on August and to my rude shock, I didn’t get paid for the month of August because apparently I chose to get paid 9 months over 12 months. And they’ll use half a month of what I earned in August to pay for half of month of May next year. This means that I will be working for 45 days with NO pay at all. Just feel so frustrated with all the delays, especially I am still waiting for reimbursement from my relocation and an unexpected dental work that came up. Just super frustrated with university system, that’s all.

Hello my fellow professors and happy semesters to all!

So I don't allow class recordings, mainly for privacy reasons but also since no one was watching them anyway. This hasn't been an issue until now. I've gotten a student accommodation allowing them to record class, especially lectures. In the past, I wouldn't have blinked at this accommodation, but given the AI deepfakes and spiteful retaliatory nature students can have, as well as where I teach (red state), I am now worried about the recoding potentially being used to generate a deepfake of me, especially if a student doesn't like their grade. The accommodation office has been... less than clear when asked what protections are provided to keep this from happening, but they are open to suggestions for an equivalent accommodation. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated!

This is a new one. I’ve had one or two PhD students over the years sit in on my class. Mostly audit or drop in for some lectures, but to actually register… and then hit me up for extra accommodations. I’m dumbfounded.

I’m wondering if teaching my sections should count as part of my workout for the day…

Link to the Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-ai-evangelists

These people annoy me. Ethan I am aware of — I wasn’t aware of Lilach’s work. This guy is an AI opportunist, using it to build his career to the detriment of our students. Case in point:

“Students and scholars have more agency than they often think, Ethan adds: “If you are good at writing, if you’re good at instruction, if you have an imagination, if you have a wide breadth of knowledge, these systems are yours to control.”

Well, Ethan, how do students become good at writing if they hand over their writing to AI from a young age and are never required to grapple with difficult texts and ideas without AI summaries.

Sure, *maybe* AI can be a superpower for a millennial or GenX who has already acquired these skills. But what about everyone after them? You know, our current students?

I don’t allow students to redo assignments. It would lead to a never-ending cascade of extra work. But a student submitted his first essay as a giant paragraph: 400 words. I just gave it a zero and asked him to use paragraphs next time.

Am I being too harsh?

We just got an email letting us know about Convocation (the pointless all school rah-rah meeting), with this gem of an incentive:

"All Convocation attendees receive a raffle ticket for priority entry to lunch and a chance to win fun prizes!"

I'm definitely going to convocation now! A chance at priority entry to the free (crappy) lunch!

Hey all. I saw some other posts on here about pricing honorariums but couldn't get any insights on the matter since my context seems different.

I did a short paid partnership with an ed tech brand for some social media work a while back. Recently they invited me to speak for a corporate event that they've organised for key decision makers to get to know their product. They want me to talk about a related area of my work with some advocacy for their product.

They sponsored travel and stay, but did not mention any speaker fee or honorarium at the start, saying that this is their standard practice. When I brought it up, they asked me to quote a figure. They got back with a 50% slash in what I asked for.

They now claim that this is their standard rate for someone at the start of their career and positioned it as a gain in exposure for me.

Background: I'm a professor/non-practicing doctor holding a part time position, early in the healthcare career, but I also run my own freelance business and consultancy in the education space. The company that approached me is a fairly successful and established one. I'm from Asia.

Conundrum: I'm less inclined to accept their offer because I consider it as a loss of revenue from my end. And since this isn't a conference as such, a small curated event with the goal of product sales, I think a speakers fee is expected? So I do plan to get back to them with my rates, but I'm not sure if negotiations are standard practice.

Would appreciate perspective on this matter.

So I was browsing some articles from last year and found a really interesting quote:

“One of the closest guarded secrets in American higher education is the average teaching loads of faculty.” -Richard Vedder

The quote was in a piece arguing US faculty should teach more. It then goes on to explain how little actual public / published documentation exists referencing actual data. When you look at it in comparison to things like salaries it is indeed rare.

It then brings up several other intriguing references:

“Since 1996, for instance, the University of Delaware has administered the annual National Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity, surveying faculty and teaching assistants about course loads and enrollment. The data, though, are “only available to four-year, non-profit institutions of higher education.”[7] This secrecy, needless to say, is not the norm for surveys collected by publicly supported institutions. Tellingly, this study is being discontinued because the number of participating institutions “has slowly declined to unsustainable levels.”[8].

“There are some decent older studies that are public, like this 2005 survey of top colleges showing that almost all have teaching loads between 4 and 6 courses per year. But in terms of recent data that is publicly available, the best I’ve found is the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement. It still isn’t great, since their 2024 survey only covers 54 of the 2000+ bachelor’s degree granting colleges in the US, and their tables show that these 54 aren’t especially representative.”

“This shows that the average professor teaches 4.43 undergraduate courses and 0.75 graduate courses, for a total of 5.18 courses per academic year. If I restrict the data to full-time tenured or tenure-track professors, they teach an average of 4.72 undergraduate courses and 0.91 graduate courses, for a total of 5.63 courses per academic year.”

He goes on to then state how even those numbers were higher than he expected. This really surprised me. While I understand some research roles and chairs do maintain lower loads in exchange for administrative / other duties, this seems quite low for an overall mean.

This is by far not representative of my institution. We have adjunct faculty maintaining seven to nine courses per academic year. I average 6.5 courses Fall and Spring and 5 in the Summer (for the previous three years) in addition to Workforce Development and some research. Now, I’m traditionally always at overload and my colleagues are usually lower at 5/5 and 4 in Summer, but it’s not rare for them to be at overload one of the three semesters in the given academic year.

Are these numbers representative of your institution, or do you and your colleagues facilitate more as we do? I understand overload is fundamentally a choice and not for / representative of everyone, but I expected at the very least an average around 4/4, not under six for the entire academic year…

Despite being recently retired, I seem to have retained my "CMS Power User" reputation among former colleagues:  I've gotten emails today from several complaining about Canvas being slow > very slow > glacial > unavailable. The message, "This website is under heavy load (request timed out). We're sorry, too many people are accessing this website at the same time. We're working on this problem. Please try again later," has just appeared for them.

Anyone else having this problem today? Of course the school's IT assures everyone it's not their fault, so we're curious to know if it really is a Canvas issue. Thanks in advance!

As if there isn’t enough hierarchy already within higher education! Referring to a colleague as “junior” after they have completed a PhD and successfully navigated the job market is demeaning.

EDIT: gosh thanks for the peptalk everyone but I’m not junior faculty. Lol probably retiring next year kiss kiss

I’ve been a part time college welding instructor in Ontario for around 2 years now and I’ve just moved into doing it full time for the winter semester. Is the switch from part-time to full time teaching a hard adjustment?

With the groups of kids coming in lately, I’m not very excited for it. I’ve had a few who’ve completely destroyed their machines and so many of them can’t think for themselves.

Hi All,

I teach a large lecture class of 250 at the undergraduate level. One of you wonderful Redditors gave me the idea of incorporating student voices into my class by giving them a survey on their ideas on how the class would run. It has been extremely well recieved just one week in. One of my questions was about...asking questions. To no one's surprise, a significant number said that they do not want to ask a question in front of 250 people (and I get that)

I'm looking for solutions to remove roadblocks, and I came across OnlineQuestions.org, and was wondering if anyone used it. It allows for an easy, user-friendly, and free way to get questions-- but it is completely anonymous. It seems REALLY cool.

My fear is that it will be overrun with inappropriate and unprofessional comments from students. I say this because last year I ran a Kahoot where users signed in with names like "ThisClassSucks" and crude language that wasn't appropriate for a workplace. Because we didnt have any other tracking, nothing could be done about it.

Am I overthinking this, or am I setting myself up for frustration? Any other solutions?

And I already feel like fleeing the war zone!

Hey,

So I am teaching a larger survey course for my department. Due to an error, I have about 25 students in the class, as opposed to it being capped at 20. I teach at a SLAC so large lecture halls are not really a thing.

This course is part history and part lit. I do not mind lecturing but over the past few years, we have been assaulted with the idea to lecture as little as possible.

So for this class, I have assigned each of them a section of the history text reading (very factual based)--around 6 to 9 pages. They have to upload their notes. In class, they meet with their own experts to go over the material and then shift to another group that has someone from a different section. This is the typical jigsaw-style exercise.

IT FAILED majorly. The students could not communicate. They did not understand how to distill and then teach. It was a major fail. It was like watching babies try to walk for the first time...but like apathetic babies who hated the world. I am not going to be reviewing the material in a classic lecture on Friday.

I am a litle freaking out because while I don't mind lecturing, I am trying to avoid it. It is sooo much prep. And it is super demoralizing to be doing my song and dance to a room full of blue screened, Amazon shopping faces.

But I think I just have to add a lecture for the history portion and be done with it.

Any thoughts? Ideas?

I teach at a Swedish university. The most students i have in a course is about 25 (master's program) and the least is 6 (PhD program). I don't teach at the bachelors level but the numbers there are not that big either, usually 50 students. These numbers are very typical of small universities in Sweden and other Nordic countries.

Just wondering how different the numbers are in other European and American universities.

I was initially ready to side against the professor, because I don't agree with his stance on assisted dying. But having read the story, it seems like an outrageous move by the university.

My read is that he expresses his views opposing assisted dying on his personal social media account, which doesn't involve the university at all, and that somebody complained to the university, so they sent the professor a warning letter. What about academic freedom?

What do you think?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/29/university-accused-muzzling-academic-assisted-dying/

At my institution, we advise as well as teach. I have an advisee, let’s call them Ron, that has been taking undergraduate courses for nigh on a decade and is not at all close to fulfilling his degree requirements. Ron has taken several very basic major requirements two or three times and is onto his third and fourth attempts. I don’t have that much hope for his success this time around, given that Ron is still failing courses left and right, including online courses where passing seems mainly reliant on turning literally anything in. I don’t feel like I should ever tell a student to give up and move on, but I also feel it’s unethical to encourage them to keep spending time and money on something they don’t seem equipped to handle. I’m not sure how much the institution cares if they are still getting paid. What would you tell Ron?

AI Spray.

The aerosol canister had appeared on her desk overnight. Probably a prank from one of her colleagues, she thought. Or a student, although she couldn’t imagine any of them having the imagination for something like this.

It looked like a slightly unusual can of air freshener. Or bug spray even. Printed on a green background with a scattering of off-yellow circles, the words “AI SPRAY” stood out in bold lettering, along with “USE WITH CAUTION” in smaller type underneath — the white-outlined text popping against the green and yellow.

Curious, thought Alice as she dumped her bag on the floor and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

She picked the can up and turned it over in her hands. No list of ingredients or the usual illegibly small and improbably long set of instructions on how to use it. Not even a company logo. Just a neat little box on the back warning users: “Do not inhale.”

Slightly nonplussed, Alice returned the canister to the desk and picked up her coffee mug. Something was niggling her about it, though. It wasn’t that she was particularly into AI. But she was pretty vocal about the technology. And especially about how some people were abusing it.

As she slipped a capsule into the coffee machine, she smiled as she recalled last night’s tirade at the local faculty drinking hangout. Everyone in the college had just received this year’s glossy brochure describing how they were “transforming the world as they empower students to thrive in an AI-accelerated future.”

“Poppycock!” she’d declared as she read the Dean’s improbably optimistic foreword. “AI slop that’s good for nothing but the recycling bin. Who even reads this stuff?”

“Donors?” Alesha suggested. Although by the uncertainty in her voice, it was clear that even she wasn’t sure. “Or maybe they’re just writing for other AIs these days. No-one reads anymore, anyway, do they?”

“What we need,” Alice had responded, getting into her two-beers-in stride, “is an ‘AI-be-gone’ device. Something that you simply point at anything made by AI, and it disappears!”

She stopped, coffee mug halfway to her mouth, the memory cascading through her thoughts. Was that it?

Back at her desk, she picked up the canister again. Probably just a can of deodorant with a custom-printed label, she thought. She smiled at the idea of something for preventing unseemly body odors being used to do the same for unseemly AI use.

Then the smile took on a mischievous edge. She fished out a student essay from the papers she’d removed from her bag a few minutes earlier. This’ll teach them, she said to herself. She was pretty sure they were all using AI for their assignments. But of course there was little she could do about it — other than the usual ineffectual reminders to use their brains and not their chatbot.

Alice held the paper up and pressed down the spray cap. Some of her students’ work could do with a little AI-deodorizing, she felt.

Gobsmacked, she watched the text dissolve into nothingness.

Grabbing another paper from the pile, she tried again. This time a few words stayed on the page, the rest disappearing before her eyes. The third one survived a little better, but the fourth was a wipe out.

Her smile widened as she searched around for the college brochure. Spray. Gone. Every last word of the Dean’s sanctimonious AI optimism, wiped out. Take that! thought Alice with glee.

Curious now as to how far the AI spray’s reach went, she opened up her laptop and brought up her email. The first message to pop up was from her department Chair: “Dear Alice, I deeply honor you for vulnerably sharing your feelings about this year’s annual review and the sacred place your scholarship holds in your life. Please know that calling your work ‘adequate’ is my fullest, most heartfelt endorsement of your consistent excellence, and not a critique. I’m so excited to hold space with you as we lean into co-creating alignment that even more vibrantly celebrates your impact ...”

She aimed the canister at the email and pressed down … and watched the typed words fade away.

Feeling a little light-headed, she tried again. And again. Some emails survived; many did not.

LinkedIn was next — that was a bloodbath, although maybe “bleach bath” was more appropriate.

Then X. And Substack. Even Bluesky. Alice found herself caught up in an intoxicating AI deodorization flow state as she moved from website to website.

There was a knock at the door, momentarily breaking her attention. “Come in,” she said, watching the words begin to fade on a prominent journal’s website.

The door opened and the Dean popped his head around it. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing …” he started to say.

But Alice’s finger was already pressing the cap down on the can, its nozzle no longer pointing at the screen.

Note

You may surmise that I was inspired here by growing use of AI to generate content without thought or effort. You would surmise correctly :) Not that I think using AI for generating content is bad per se. But I do think there needs to be far more nuance in how we think about how we use it — and what this says about how we think about and value ourselves and others. This includes what's important to us (and what is not), what we care about (and what we do not), what we're willing to compromise on (and what we are not), and a whole lot more.

Tommorow is my first day for teaching my first ENG 101class. And, like all my time here during week one I wonder if I might die there in a mass shooting.

It didn't used to be like this.

Why are we allergic to deadlines?? If you tell me I need to do something but don't tell me when it needs to be done by (or you give me something vague like "soon"), it's not going on my high priority list and I don't think you can reasonably get frustrated with me for not doing it according to a timeline that you never communicated. Am I wrong? Do other people experience this?

All contexts apply here: writing, publishing, but also service, program assessment tasks, over-email departmental votes, nominations, etc.

What is the best option for transitioning into retirement for professors? In another thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1w1gu05/older_profs_who_can_retirewhy_stay_on/), there was a discussion about why it is so difficult for professors to retire. Many described how hard it is for them to let go of their personal identity, which they have drawn almost exclusively from their work as professors. Others mentioned that they have maintained few social contacts outside of the university and cannot imagine how they would fill their days.

What experiences have you had, or how do you envision a gradual - or even abrupt - transition into retirement? My idea is to slowly but surely ease into my own insignificance. I’m doing this by continuing to work for a few more years after being officially retired, writing some books, and staying academically active, but no longer actively participating in conferences. At the same time, I’m trying to build up social and volunteer commitments, reconnect with friends, and expand social contacts that I’ve neglected during my career.

I’m looking forward to your suggestions and ideas, and I’m sure I can learn something for my life.

Be careful using a personal account for background music during those long IT labs (Like SharePoint install and config). Didn't reach the mute button in time for the dirty version of Let’s Get It Started - Black Eyed Peas. Luckily, he didn't take it as an insult.
The upside is it was a one-on-one Teams meeting, so no admin walking past.

Pepperidge Farm remembers. There was a 1-paragraph abstract describing your course. There was the your office number and maybe your office hours. There was 1 line for each week of the semester, maybe with the associated reading. If you were really comprehensive, there was a grading scale.

Students already had the book because they went to the bookstore and bought it before the term started.