At the university, whose work is more valuable--a professor's or an administrative assistant's? In a time of budget cuts, should the professor--who might make vastly more than the administrative assistant--be expected to sacrifice proportionately, or should academics be immune from the slings and arrows of budgetary fortune? These and other issues have been raised these past few weeks during a wide-ranging discussion in the academic blogosphere.

In the 11 years since I graduated from college, the one constant in my many jobs and hobbies has been writing: exhibition labels, news and features articles, poetry, blogs, scholarly essays, development (fund-raising) writing, grants, marketing collateral, website copy, a thesis, a dissertation. I have written myself into (and occasionally out of) many opportunities. I try to explain to my students the magical properties of writing to snag interesting opportunities. At the same time, however, I'm wrestling with my own identity and voice as a writer.

I have heard a couple of professors say that some students are so ingenious when it comes to cheating on tests that the profs feel they should give the students credit for their resourcefulness, even while they fail them on the tests. University administrators, however, are taking a harder stance when it comes to another common form of cheating on campuses: music piracy. Higher stakes in music piracy enforcement

Forget Dancing with the Stars--there's a new phenomenon for the geeky set: Dance Your Ph.D.. I first learned of the contest thanks to Sara Lipka at the Chronicle of Higher Education. As explained on the contest's home page, "the human body is an excellent medium for communicating science--perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting."

You'd think if you're youngish, female, and have a Ph.D., you're at the top of your game: school is behind you because (thank god) you finally have the terminal degree, your shiny new life is ahead of you, yada yada. But if you're young, female, have a Ph.D., and you aren't a professor, things get a bit more complicated.

What do women with advanced degrees want from life--and what do they get? Summarizing Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, Scott Jaschik writes at Inside Higher Ed,

I was recently talking with a colleague from another campus of my university about older male professors, those who have retired but who still hang around for various reasons. I said (mostly tongue in cheek), that we have two kinds of male emeriti on our campus: curmudgeonly (whom I adore) and creepy (not so much). At the same time, despite their, um, quirkly personalities, these men seem to still have many connections and friends.

A post by New Kid on the Hallway drew my attention to a conversation on EconLog in which a few individuals (mostly men, it appears), try to discredit individual disciplines by declaring them to be intellectually "corrupt": Some academic disciplines are more bogus than others: Women's Studies is not Mathematics. My first reaction to this claim, of course, was to let my blood boil. After all, my Ph.D. diploma does reference a designated emphasis in feminist theory.

Before I get to the teachers' union news, you should know: I grew up in a union family and I'm unabashedly pro-union. Here's why: Mom and Dad were each members of at least three unions: the national, state, and local teachers' unions. They walked the picket lines and Dad even appeared in the newspaper chanting at a school board meeting. During the tenures of California governors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, we experienced some lean, if not uncomfortable, times in our household. Mom and Dad argued frequently about money, and I learned the importance of having a strong union and group of negotiators to maintain our household and our annual modest camping trips around California and neighboring states.