Comments on The Shrinking Professoriate

• Posted by K.T. on March 12, 2008 at 9:05am EDT

• Not terribly surprising since universities have greatly expanded their activities outside undergraduate/graduate education. And, there seems to be less desire among Ph.D. graduates to go into instructional positions. The majority of my own cohort either became administrators or went to work in industry.

• Sign of the times
• Posted by Ann on March 12, 2008 at 9:15am EDT

• Don't jump to the easy conclusion: that institutions are placing less emphasis on the academic program and padding the administrative ranks. As a faculty member turned administrator I am not surprised by the fact that there are more administrators, because more administrators are needed. I have served in two different administrative positions and well over 50% of my time has been spent dealing with problems and tasks that at one time were not part of the higher ed landscape: student issues, legal issues, assessment issues, etc. Whereas teaching was the primary work on a college campus, today's reality is quite different.

• Yes, but...
• Posted by Professor G on March 12, 2008 at 9:35am EDT

• While I agree with Ann's comment that (many) administrators face a wider variety of duties and heavier workloads, the reality remains that faculty lines -- at least in the 3 state systems that I've been a part of -- are not considered funding priorities. The "academic year model" of finance seems to reward NOT replacing faculty lines, as it then appears that a college within a school or the school itself has more money in its budget.

  Most of the administrators that I know work hard in an often thankless job. So, in fact, do most of the faculty that I know -- except our numbers continue to dwindle even as schools (at least in my system) continue to push for and boast of record enrollments. Apparently we can administer these students out the wazoo, but who's going to actually *teach* them?

• Just Wondering
• Posted by Gavin Wood on March 12, 2008 at 10:25am EDT

• Is the growing army of part-timers and non tenure-track professors also a big part of what has to be administered?

• Posted by K.T. on March 12, 2008 at 10:30am EDT

• Don’t jump to the easy conclusion: that institutions are placing less emphasis on the academic program and padding the administrative ranks.

  Don't jump to conclusions without reading more carefully... Simply because universities have expanded their non-academic activities does not mean they focus less on the academic activities. It is not a zero sum game.

  If the academic budget increases, but the non-academic budget increases more rapidly - as at my institution - the university has expanded its non-academic programs, but not at the expense of academic programs. Many universities have simply expanded student services, public service centers, etc. which require administrators and not faculty.

• More Signs of the Times
• Posted by Phil Ray Jack at Green River Community College on March 12, 2008 at 10:40am EDT

• Ann does bring up an interesting point -- colleges are dealing with issues that I didn't expect to be part of the academic landscape. However, these issues aren't limited to the administration, they've crept into the world of the faculty as well.

  Take assessment as an example. While teachers have always assessed the effectiveness of what we do (we called it "grading," "program review," etc.), now we are "being held accountable." For assessment to be meaningful, the faculty must be involved.

  Unfortunately, that brings us back to the issues associated with the Academic Staffing Crisis -- With fewer full-time faculty available to share the load and part-time faculty either being unavailable or expected to work for free, the issue simply adds more stress to the system.

  The "simple" solution in too many instances has been to hire more administrators -- which is more expensive that converting part-time faculty to full-time positions, but a lot less complicated.

  So, now assessment is being taken out of the hands of those who are actually in the classrooms.

• A feather in the cap to publics...
• Posted by Bob on March 12, 2008 at 11:10am EDT

• whom if mine eyes do not decieve me have many fewer administrators then their private school counterparts. Yet, there are still those who shout about "the bloated, wasteful administrators" spending tax dollers at public schools. It is all a chimera meant to divert attention from the real issues.

  Yup, I am definately going to be citing this research to those folks. Meanwhile, I am still waiting for a new contract with an increase, or even a COLA.

• Yes, this IS a problem
• Posted by Sarah Ullman , Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago on March 12, 2008 at 11:15am EDT

• This is a huge problem and one that continues to strain the ability of all of us in public higher education institutions in particular to perform all of the core tasks we have as faculty (such as teaching, research, and service), as our roles increasingly involve administrative work, such as management of part-time employees, namely graduate student and adjunct instructors.

  This problem is described in the higher education literature. For example, I suggest a real eye-opener that I could not put down when I started reading it, Marc Bousquet's new (2008) book "How the university works: higher education in the low-wage nation." NYU Press.

  He talks about many issues including the informal economy, organization theory, and management theory as they affect higher education and its relationship to the labor market generally.

• Entertainment Status
• Posted by bluechip , Faculty at Green River Community College on March 12, 2008 at 11:25am EDT

• Since we all seem to be buying into this "education as business" model and we faculty are the ones on the playing field trying to meet the entertainment desires of the customers (students), I want a deal like the players in professional sports, where the players get paid more than the administrators and the stars get "escalation clauses" that guarantee them a percentage plus the highest administrator salary.

  Unfortunately, our industry is still in [Upton] Sinclar's jungle, with our cut-off limbs just more sausage to feed the masses.

  Oops! There I go, being cynical again!

• Posted by Alex , Asst. Prof. on March 12, 2008 at 2:35pm EDT

• Since I'm too lazy to read the detailed study at this moment, is there a breakdown between residential and commuter campuses? I'd expect residential campuses to have more administrators because the campus has offices for more aspects of student life. My first reaction to the figures is that 2 year colleges and public schools are more often commuter schools, so the data makes a certain amount of sense. OTOH, it shows that public for-profit schools also have a lot of administrators relative to full time faculty. My observation there is that when I was at a for-profit school most of the faculty were part time.

  So I can come up with anecdotes to support my explanation, but I have no clue if the explanation is correct.

• Posted by CW on March 12, 2008 at 2:35pm EDT

• I'm a full-time tenured professor in a state university science department that is growing in numbers of majors but shrinking in terms of full-time faculty. My department is down from 9 to 4 over 5 years. We're being asked to do more teaching plus more administrative duties while relying increasingly on part-time adjunct faculty for many classes. Our "full-time" work loads have increased to beyond "full-time" since there are fewer of us to handle growing departmental administrative tasks handed down from new administrative offices. I can't argue that we don't need many of the administrators that we now have in this era, but I wonder if many of them couldn't be hired as adjunct part-timers without benefits too, instead of only the academic end of the "business" bearing that burden? We're getting very tired and it's getting harder to find and retain qualified faculty, much less the enthusiastic and inspired teachers of yesterday.

• Want fries with that?
• Posted by Michael , Assoc Dean at Private Univ. on March 12, 2008 at 2:35pm EDT

• Because this report was only about full-time employees, not total numbers, it may reflect that an increasing proportion of faculty are part-timers. In part it's because part-time faculty are cheeper labor for a university, but also (my own experience) because it's hard to raise a family on a faculty salary, so you work somewhere else and teach part-time.

• Let's get real
• Posted by Bahamamamasmama , parent at Texas State on March 12, 2008 at 4:40pm EDT

• We have known there is tremendous waste in education (yes, private schools aren't doing any better than public schools) but it is the taxpayer and the parent who foots the bill at public schools. And as a parent who is footing the bill for my daughter's education -- and seeing costs increase much more rapidly than inflation --at some point academics need to recognize that we may be nearing the tipping point - where only the very wealthy kids or the poor kids who qualify for student aid can afford a college education. What needs to be done to make higher education more affordable? If we need to eliminate some of the mandates, let's do it.

• Posted by Michael on March 12, 2008 at 7:30pm EDT

• There is plenty of places to place "blame" if blame is what is appropriate for the shrinking of the professoriate.

  The shifting of advising away from professors to full-time advisors is one place.

  The life-time salary commitment due a tenured professor is a second place.

  The student demand for on-campus housing and amenities is third place.

  The growing labrynth of federal, state, and local regulation and attending paperwork is a fourth place.

  The surplus of Ph.D.s relative to teaching positions is a fifth place.

  The academic fondness for "process" and the staffing it generates is a sixth.

  It is amazing anything gets taught anymore.

• neither professor nor administrator
• Posted by James Phillips , Senior Research Programmer at University of Illinois on March 12, 2008 at 7:30pm EDT

• This study seems to be based on the assumption that if you work for a university but are not a professor then you must be an administrator. I am a full time researcher and my duties have nothing to do with administration. The same is true for a large number of employees.

• Posted by Jinxintx on March 13, 2008 at 11:55am EDT

• Michael made many good points but in reference to this...

  "The shifting of advising away from professors to full-time advisors is one place."

  At my institution, this was done at the request of faculty who have since also abandoned mentoring, which is very different from professional advising but still necessary.

  I would add that a greater concentration of resources and priorities on research is part of the problem.

• Cost to hire anyone
• Posted by S. Tyler on March 13, 2008 at 12:05pm EDT

• Again, let's not forget the fringe!! At somewhere in the neighborhood of $14,000 to pay for an FTE's (faculty or administrator) health insurance -- and that's 80% of it -- it's a wonder anyone is being hired anymore. However, the administrators are usually hammering away in budget meetings about how badly their particular FTE is needed. I'm presuming, perhaps spuriously, that it's more difficult for faculty to make their case to the university/college as they are once removed from the budget process and must apply to "the powers that be" for their additional FTEs. Maybe administrators are recommending filling those needed teaching slots with adjuncts in the hopes of avoiding these huge additional costs.

  I believe this is the main driver of the current trend in hiring. Administration is bulking up due to all of the reasons cited above. However, there are also more people going to college than ever before and likely more professors are required to teach. I would concur that fewer professors are being hired as full time or into tenure track positions for those long-haul reasons.

• misleading tables
• Posted by Ann Murray , Manager of Institional Research at Laramie County Community College on March 13, 2008 at 4:50pm EDT

• If you go to the report on which this article is based, you'll find that the study actually looks at full-time professional staff with and without faculty status. Those without faculty status include staff in a variety of positions, not just those that are classified as administrators. The assumption that those who are not faculty must be administrators was not on the part of those who did the NCES study, but those who prepared this IHE article.

• Speaking of misleading headlines
• Posted by Amanda , Professor on March 16, 2008 at 6:30am EDT

• The headline is misleading as well. Looking at the numbers in the report suggests that the absolute number of faculty has increased across the board. There are more full-time professors, more tenure track, and more tenured professors than a few years ago. It just happens that the ranks of the part-time, non-tenure-track faculty are growing more rapidly. It's not really a "shrinking" professoriate - just an increasingly part-time one!

• Posted by WH , Vice President for Administration on May 20, 2008 at 2:10pm EDT

• With the decline in state support and the growth in technology as a critical component of instructional and research activities, a significant amount of the administrative growth that has been seen over the past several years has been in fundraisers and IT speciliasts.