Shorts (right)
Gap in university faculty pay continues to grow, report says
For the academic elite — tenured professors at private research universities — average pay this year is $167,118, while at public research universities such professors earn $123,393, according to the annual report by the American Association of University Professors.
After three years in which overall increases in full-time faculty pay lagged behind the rate of inflation, this year’s average increase, 1.7 percent, kept pace with consumer prices.
But the difficult economic climate is taking a serious toll on higher education, especially public institutions. Average pay for assistant professors at private colleges that award only bachelor’s degrees is $62,763, while public colleges paid $58,591.
And with stretched budgets and public pressure to keep costs down, many colleges and universities are cutting back on tenure and tenure-track jobs. According to the report, such positions now make up only 24 percent of the academic workforce, with the bulk of the teaching load shifted to adjuncts, part-timers, graduate students and full-time professors not on the tenure track.
—Tamar Lewin, The New York Times
Body on subway tracks goes unnoticed for hours
NEW YORK — She entered the subway system sometime around 1 a.m. on Sunday, dressed in dark clothes and dark boots as if coming from a night on the town. By the afternoon, her lifeless body lay among the soot-darkened track ties and trash under Canal Street.
Had she been hit by a train? Could the severe injuries to her head have been caused by a fall from the platform? How had none of the passengers passing through the downtown side of the station, or any of the train operators, noticed the body?
The police did not classify the death as a homicide, but as that of someone “dead on arrival,” leaving open the question of how she perished.
—J. David Goodman, The New York Times
In Egypt, attacks on Christians
CAIRO — Police officers firing tear gas joined with a rock-throwing crowd fighting a group of Christian mourners Sunday in a battle that escalated into an attack on Egypt’s main Coptic Christian Cathedral that lasted for hours.
It was the third day of an outburst of sectarian violence that is testing the pledges of Egypt’s Islamist president to protect the country’s Christian minority. By nightfall at least one person had died from the day’s clashes, bringing the weekend’s death toll to six.
—David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim, The New York Times