Too broad

Besides gender and race, everyone would have benefited from a breakdown by colleges (arts and sciences, business, law, engineering, etc.), as well as doctoral granting, non-doctoral granting 4 year institution, and community college.

michael, at 8:15 am EDT on March 28, 2007

Tenure has long stopped serving its primary purpose of protecting academic freedom. As Cal has noted, part-time (or, more accurately, non-research) faculty should have their academic freedom protected just as much as those who do research, and at quality institutions they do through internal contractual protections. But today tenure is far more often a refuge for the lazy or incompetent than it is a shield for the controversial. It is high time this archaic institution be radically reformed to protect the academic freedom of ALL faculty (new, part-time, and non-research, as well as established research faculty) but not to protect those who are not properly doing their jobs. Fair procedures would need to be established to distinguish between the two types of cases so that arrogant administrators can’t run roughshod over capable, hard working faculty they don’t like for whatever reason, but coming up with such procedures is not that difficult. The long term health of higher education depends on this evolution.

Chaired Professor, at 9:05 am EDT on March 28, 2007

Off The Tenure Track

Using the figures published here, the total of all faculty members (both part time and full time) that are ineligible for tenure is nearly 68 percent. This may be a slight overestimate, since some adjuncts may be counted multiple numbers of times because they teach at several different institutions at the same time. But the overall figure is disturbing, since it seems to be increasing with each passing year. If present trends continue, after 20 more years, the tenure track will probably be virtually nonexistent.

Frankly, I can’t see any good reason why anyone would want to consider a career in academe. The only thing you have to look forward to is a hardscrabble existence, working for low wages and no benefits in an increasingly precarious environment, fearful that making even the slightest waves could get you thrown out on the street.

Joe Baugher, at 10:56 am EDT on March 28, 2007

duh!

As Cal and others have noted in more polite terms, duh! We’ve been seeing the diminution of ladder faculty for years, and this is scarcely a surprise to anyone paying attention within academics.

The question is: NOW WHAT? What are university administrators and mangerial faculty prepared to do? In what ways are they/we prepared to share governance — such as it is — with the folks who really keep the place running, aka the non-tenurable, adjunct and part-time folks who teach the bulk of the lower division classes at most large universities? Should faculty unionize across the board? If not, why not, and what other model for collective bargaining are we going to use. Because if we don’t do something, the university will become a skeleton crew of manager-administrators with a vast workforce of seasonal workers. Such a fate may be inevitable, but if it is, then how can we work to protect employees and students within such a framework?

These conversations are way overdue. The university may be an architectural ruin but most of us agree that the learning that goes on is important to students, faculties, and communities. So, we need to do something to strategize in the wake of these seismic systemic changes.

Stephanie Hammer, tenured cultural worker and NON-manager at UC Riverside, at 11:55 am EDT on March 28, 2007

I think that adjunct faculty in many cases bring a fresher approach to teaching. They are practitioners, who teach what they have experienced in real life. Too many institutions hiring our students want students who were taught the latest and greatest information in the field of study. In some cases, not all, this can very well be done more effectively with practioners than theorists/researchers. I think a good combination of both practioners and theorists/researchers are good for a campus.

TAS, at 12:11 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

Creative full-time combinations

Setting aside for a moment the tenure vs. non-tenure issue and considering full-time vs. part-time employment (while acknowledging that adjuncts are often full-time):

Creative universities could easily devise employment roles that would permit people with faculty-level training and experience to be employed full-time, even if the amount of classroom labor needed doesn’t rise to the full-time level. And they could improve the overall campus educational environment in doing so.

One obvious example: most of the full-time positions in student affairs divisions could readily be handled by people who are employed also as part-time faculty. Residential deans, academic advisors, campus-center directors, and so on — all these positions could easily be filled by part-time faculty. Is it for everyone? No. But many people with faculty experience who are seeking full-time work and who are told that only part-time teaching is available would flourish in such positions, and their presence would improve the quality of the educational environment for everyone.

R.J. O’Hara, The Collegiate Way, at 12:26 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

Major Drive of this Trend

I think it important to note one, if not the, major driver of this trend. As the last major institutional category to enter the marketplace, older, typically faculty governed universities have found themselves at a competitive disadvantage with respect to the for-profits and what we call the “aggressive independent” institutions. One reason for this disadvantage is their negative economies of scale and scope; the more faculty are paid, the less they teach and the less of the market their teaching addresses. (Another reason is poor customer service—also relevant but less directly.)

In the past decade, these old, often large, faculty governed institutions have lost significant market share to managed institutions that have rationalized their production function to achieve a linear or even positively non-linear relationship between production and production cost. Adjunct faculties, who are paid primarily for what they do on an incremental basis, are an important part of this economic outcome. The success of institutions following these new production models has not been lost on administrators of faculty-governed institutions. Knowing that there is little they can do to exhort their traditional faculty to become more productive (many schools boast that full professors teach only one class per term), they have done the only thing they can do—develop a comprehensive corps of managed adjunct faculty.

I issue a note of caution for those who would decry this trend as a catastrophe in quality. You might be well-advised not to invite the research. Our studies show that practitioner adjunct achieve better learning outcomes and higher levels of learner satisfaction than full-time professors who have no non-academic experience.

There are many solutions to this “problem.” The best ones have to do with separating teaching and research and compensating for each separately, based on outcomes.

Robert Tucker, President at InterEd, Inc., at 1:42 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

Re: Tucker

Regarding Tucker’s comments, I want to point out that he is ignoring the increased availability of adjuncts, which has grown significantly.

Institutions chronically and compulsively overeducate students – this is a fact of life, as is the credential inflation that drives it. It is this availability that makes the adjunct option appealing to the institutions. Not only do the institutions graduate too many students, but they over-produce graduates in just those instructional areas (and at the advanced levels) that the institutions themselves recruit faculty from!

Secondly, instructor quality DOES suffer from these trends.

Given the low status of adjuncts, and the high status of departmental heads, the power differential works against instructors maintaining control over what classes they are assigned to and what they must teach. And as you well know, regional accreditation plays no meaningful role in institutional quality control in this regard.

These situational dynamics mirror exactly what occurs at the secondary level, which has resulted in the NCLB “highly qualified teacher” requirements. See the research at http://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/ingersoll.html.

But you are right about one thing: these trends are changing the institutions, and they are looking more and more like the for-profits. What is the downside to this (aside from the usual rhetoric)?

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at FHEAP, at 4:30 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

The data presented do not tell us what percentage of classes are taught by adjunct faculty, full time or tenured faculty. It would be interesting to track these trends. I would guess that full time and tenured faculty teach about 3 classes per semester on average while most adjuncts teach only one. If this were the case, then although adjuncts may be 1/2 of all faculty, they teach only 1/4 of the classes.

Barry, at 5:15 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

The only times I’ve seen real changes in campus cultures and governance is when faculty had the guts to make it happen. We can bemoan “corporatization” of the university which seems to be at the root of the problem but, come on, who is really challenging the trend among us? Somebody once said to me, and it was annoying at the time but I see the wisdom of it now, that good universities have something in common— a good administration. Think about it for a second— even those with the most impressive faculty, staff, students, and resources on the planet are hurt by bad administrations.

If your administration is making stupid decisions and letting state mandates, silly fads, its own budgetary problems, etc., dictate the institution’s mission, policies, and practices (or they’re just visionless bureaucrats), then you have to agitate for better administration. If the PT pool is too big and the FTTT pool is too small, what are you going to do about it? The administrations have to WANT to change that— and only if they want to on principle, and not because the latest accreditation bureau is coming down the pike, will they begin making decisions that challenge the status quo. And how else will they come to want to, if not through real pressure from below? (It sure isn’t going to come from above.)

Wally Cleaver, at 6:05 pm EDT on March 28, 2007

I have a tenure-track job at a research university, with a dreamy courseload and (I think) a very good shot at tenure when I go up next year. I realize every day how improbably unfortunate I am to have this job, and also how unjust it is that I have such a great job while thousands of my peers with identical or superior credentials are working in the adjunct salt mines, as it were. I find the numbers reported in this article profoundly dismaying, and not just for selfish reasons.

Can I suggest a more constructive avenue for expressing one’s outrage than turning on the fortunate few who have tenure or TT jobs? (Which isn’t to say that we in our ivy-tower oblivion don’t generally warrant the resentment.) Can we instead use forums like this one to brainstorm ways to turn this situation around? Soon I hope to have tenure: once I have that relative impunity, how can I best use it to ensure that my own university treats ALL of its employees well? Are my efforts best focused at the level of my university, or my state legislature, or through my professional associations, or national lobbying, or what? How can we convince students, parents, and legislators that teachers with decent pay and job security give their students a better education than teachers who are run ragged and constantly in fear of being fired (I’m not being defensive here; I’m sincerely hoping to spark a discussion of such pragmatic and strategic questions.)

We can start by correcting some of the more inane and misleading sentiments expressed in this thread. Robert Tucker, for instance, writes “Our studies show that practitioner adjunct achieve better learning outcomes and higher levels of learner satisfaction than full-time professors who have no non-academic experience.” This may be true if you’re only interested in giving your students vocational training in preparation for their future as corporate drones, which seems to be the mission at Tucker’s own “University” of Phoenix. But in non-business related disciplines this claim is patently absurd—at least if the goal of a university is to teach students such broader life skills as interpretive reading, analytical writing, and critical thinking.

Compare the situation of an adjunct teaching 5 sections of freshman composition and grading 125 papers every week or two, to that of an equally dedicated professor who teaches two sections a semester and can therefore devote more time to each student, and to the research that keeps him/her up-to-date and interested in the topic. Can you tell me with a straight face that the first teacher is going to deliver better “learning outcomes” (what a horrid bit of corporate jargon that is) than the second one? Let’s label Mr. Tucker as what he is: a corporate shill, who stands to profit mightily by undermining public education in this country. His comments should be read as deeply disingenuous.I suspect that Barry’s speculation about the percentage of courses taught by adjuncts is based on similar assumptions about who these adjuncts mostly are. Again, business classes are often taught by businessmen and women who are teaching as adjuncts on the side or after retirement; in that situation, Barry might be right. But the vast majority of adjuncts in this country are teaching in such labor-intensive disciplines as English composition, foreign languages, and math. At my university, professors in those fields typically teach 2 courses per semester, whereas non-tenure track lecturers typically teach 4 (presumably because their jobs entail no research expectations). I suspect this is the pattern across most public universities...

Shane in Utah, at 3:00 am EDT on March 29, 2007

Idiot savant question

Why don’t faculty ask to be treated like administration — and like every other working professional in the nation? Maybe the problem is this notion that faculty either have to be tenured — guaranteed a job for life — or contingent, and thereby disposable. Why not agitate for the conditions that other white-collar workers assume — full-time work, with benefits that include health care and 401K plans (or the TIAA-CREF) equivalent, but not a guaranteed job for life?

Beppolina, Editrixie, at 5:55 am EDT on March 29, 2007

Part-time Faculty

As a part-time lecturer in history, I agree with many of the views expressed here. I am exploited, but I’m told by my union not to make a fuss, because lecturers in my public university system have the best protections of any non-tenured faculty in the country. Whoopee. Having a great union contract means I get to be laid off regularly, I get to be assigned to classes at the last minute, I get to teach the largest classes for the lowest wages, and I get no benefits or job stability. I feel so special. And soon, I’ll get to go on strike (now that I’m just getting back to work after a 2 quarter layoff)so that tenured faculty can get a raise! I’ve about had it. I too have other experience — ten years as a paralegal. I"m thinking of going back to it and regaining my dignity and self-respect. But I’d still like to see more analysis and discussion of the role of gender in the move to part-time faculty. What does the fact that more women are available to teach part-time have to do with the increasing use of non-permanent faculty?I guess the only way things will ever change is if we part-timers stop enabling this oppressive and exploitative system by refusing to participate in it. Somebody get the word out to the grad schools — tell the students to save themselves a lot of pain and disappointment and go do something else.

Karen Pare, Lecturer at Cal State East Bay, at 3:56 pm EDT on March 29, 2007

Larry’s cynicism

Gee, Larry. That’s an awfully cynical view, isn’t it? I mean “cynical” in the old-fashioned sense— like seeing people only in terms of their worst qualities. It paints administrators in the worst possible light, as if there are no sensible ones who do care about faculty and students (yet there are, aren’t there?), and it sees faculty as if they are nothing but expendable “human resources” to exploit. And anyone who wants anything better— you know, like better leadership at the top and a mutually productive or at least liveable labor-management relationships— is just a crummy old complainer!

Gee whiz, talk about a corporate mentality!

Wally Cleaver, at 3:50 pm EDT on March 30, 2007

Response to “Why did you take that job?”

One reason I work as an adjunct is that I need to pay the rent. Gee, logic much? Another is because despite my experience and ability, the fact that the “marketplace” is over supplied with PhDs means that teaching positions that traditionally went to people with a Masters are now going to those otherwise unemployed PhDs. At least this is the case for my field (astrophysics). It does not take a PhD to teach undergraduate level physics and astronomy courses. Traditionally, the PhD meant that the person was capable of doing (and directing) advanced research. It didn’t (and still does not) imply anything about teaching ability. Yet the unis all want these PhDs and they can get more of them by hiring them not only in full time positions but as adjuncts as well. Moreover, there are a fair number of otherwise full time employed researchers (at such places as Space Telescope Science Institute) who want to gain some teaching experience. These are the worst, in my opinion, as they are “stealing the food from my table” as the saying goes. But it is literally true, I fear.

In any case, I believe that the really profound problems with post secondary education are not whether or not faculty is full time or part time but rather that this education is becoming less about learning and more about the bottom line as educational institutions become, themselves, less about learning and all about business. At least it seems this way to me.

PCVS, at 2:05 pm EDT on March 31, 2007