Teachers’ Pay Lags Furthest Behind Other Professions
One obstacle to hiring great K–12 teachers? The pay. US teachers earn more than their colleagues abroad, but salaries still trail other professions.
Colleges Push Back against Ending DACA
Eliminating DACA means many college students may face deportation and an uncertain future. What can administrators do to protect them?
Guess Who Funds STEM Research at Universities? The Humanities.
Since 2008 an increasing number of humanities faculties across the United States have faced program and departmental closures. The argument behind these closures has often been that low-earning humanities and social science departments are subsidized by lucrative science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) departments. In “The Humanities as Service Departments: Facing the Budget Logic,” Christopher... Read More
Curious about Humanities Initiatives Near You?
Enter your zip code into the NEH Impact Index to browse through projects in your community that were funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This index, created by CUNY Graduate Center Digital Fellows, highlights the work and impact of the NEH throughout humanities disciplines and makes learning about humanities-related events convenient! From... Read More
Better Working Conditions for Contingent Faculty Members: An MLA Guide
Most college and university classes in the United States and Canada are taught by faculty members who are not on the tenure track. These contingent faculty members often lack job security, teach too many classes for too little pay, and have little say in the governance of departments and institutions. In 2011, the MLA’s Committee... Read More
Taking Humanities Teaching outside the Classroom
Interested in the public humanities? Take a look at Jean E. Howard’s paper “The Public Humanities,” presented at the 2014 MLA Annual Convention. Howard, the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, begins by challenging the idea that public humanities are what happens beyond classroom walls and describes her teaching as helping “form... Read More
New Findings on Gender and Career Outcomes for Humanities Majors
What are likely career paths for humanities majors? And how does gender affect future careers and earnings? New reports from Humanities Indicators offer important insights into the connection between gender, employment, and income for humanities students. One study concluded that, after receiving a bachelor’s degree, women were more likely than men to have lower-paying jobs... Read More
The Lifelong Benefits of Speaking More Than One Language
An MLA infographic shows the benefits of multilingualism for all ages. As we get older and seek out more education and job opportunities, fluency in more than one language proves to be a helpful skill: bilingualism has been linked to greater academic performance in college and to higher lifetime earnings. For seniors, studies show that... Read More
Resources for Teaching in the Wake of Charlottesville
In a recent e-mail, the MLA’s executive director, Paula Krebs, encouraged members to share materials for teaching the issues raised by the events in Charlottesville and offered instructors a free download of the association’s Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War. In addition to the MLA volume, teachers may want to consult JSTOR’s “Charlottesville Syllabus: Readings... Read More
In Support of Quality English Teaching
Quality English teachers—whether they teach introductory composition classes or senior seminars on Middlemarch—help their students to become purposeful writers and empathetic readers. They develop their students’ abilities to communicate with clarity and sensitivity. They prepare their students to navigate an interdependent world. But quality English teaching takes time. It requires thoughtful comments on essays and... Read More