According to the American Association of Union Professors (AAUP),
A faculty member should not resign, in order to accept other employment as
of the end of the academic year, later than May 15 or 30 days after
receiving notification of the terms of continued employment the following
year, whichever date occurs later.
...
An offer of appointment to a faculty member serving at another institution
should be made no later than May 1, consistent with the faculty member’s
obligation to resign, in order to accept other employment, no later than May
15. It is recognized that, in special cases, it might be appropriate to
make an offer after May 1, but in such cases there should be an agreement by
all concerned parties.
The few relevant comments in this thread
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,163851.15.html
(e.g. comments 23, 26, 27) seem to indicate that this standard isn't important/widely observed.
However, it appears that some universities do observe it (or some variant), e.g. University of Pittsburg and University of Louisiana and Lafayette.
My questions are
- Is this etiquette widely observed? That is, would this be a reasonable barometer of what is "ethical", or is the standard dated (if ever relevant), as indicated by the commenters in the linked thread above?
- should I let the existence of this AAUP standard modify the way I handle accepting a pending offer that would require me to go beyond this May 15th deadline?
I'm soliciting anyone with knowledge of these matters but information from deans, department chairs, or anyone who has resigned at this late stage would be especially valuable. Thanks for any info.
Note: Previous posts of mine give a bit more (probably not relevant) background:
Proper "notice period" for resigning a tenure track position?
The second one is closely related but is distinct in that this question specifically is about observance of the AAUP standard that I learned about today while reading the chronicle.
Note 2: Mine is an AAUP school but does not have any explicit policy like the two mentioned above.