Comments on The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job

• Failed Policy
• Posted by Bob on May 12, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

• When administrators state that higher education would be better if not for all the tenured professors...they mean for themselves, not the students.

  Every year administrators try to come up with ways to get rid of the tenured as the study suggests. If their theory is correct then we should have the best colleges in the world, and we should be "pedal to the medal" leaving the rest of the world in the dust now that there are clearly fewer tenured professors around to "screw things up for administrators".

  What? you mean we don't??? Oh, so much for that theory.

• Tell the parents
• Posted by SUNY Steve , College Writing Program at Buffalo State College on May 12, 2009 at 9:15am EDT

• Indeed, educational quality can be boiled down to no single figure, whether ratio of tenure-line to contingent faculty or salaries of either. Maybe, for institutions of higher education addicted to the abuse and overuse of contingent faculty (including grad students, whose numbers above seem to be rising, though or maybe because they've got the least experience in this inequitable institution and are the most eager to get into it) something along the lines of the Surgeon General's warning on cigarette packaging might be appropriate for recruiting pamphlets, based on US News & World Report's recent estimation of per-course remuneration of the two faculty tiers: "We pay X % of our faculty 4.44 times more than the rest." That way, even a low figure can't hide the inequity that's become the operating assumption of this institution of ostensibly noble aims.

• Education is Commodified
• Posted by jbarlow on May 12, 2009 at 9:30am EDT

• Although I knew there were less tenure track jobs out there, the numbers were more depressing than I realized. As an adjunct I have worked at a small liberal arts college for ten years. In that time, I have taught 92 classes (an average of more than ten classes a year - three more than full time faculty is required to teach), 36 of the 84 courses the department offers, all of this for an average of $2400 per class. At this point I feel as though higher education has become a white-collar Walmart - offering poverty level wages to a skilled labor force. Yet I know it's all about money. Every adjunct position simply saves institutions money. Non-profit is a misnomer.

• Posted by Adjunct George on May 12, 2009 at 10:45am EDT

• Since the administrators are chosen from the ranks of the tenured faculity, what is this BS about there being a gulf between tenured track and the administrators? Get rid of tenure and pay people the same for equivalent jobs. Academia loves to beat up on business for the false "gender gap" when its own house is in greater disarray. So much for "compassionate liberalism." Academia is the last bastion of a caste system in the US. Five year contracts for everyone, including administrators.

   

   

   

• It's Not Just the Administration...
• Posted by HCR at Minnesota State on May 12, 2009 at 11:30am EDT

• Blame the departments - senior faculty roll over again and again so that they can have a sea of contingent faculty that can be fired at will, usually in exchange for some sort of reduced teaching workload. The only way to rectify this is by giving full department voting rights to contingent faculty, period. The first time a senior member loses an equipment or other allocation on a department vote the bloom will be off the contingent rose.

• Administrators' Rhetoric
• Posted by adjunct professor on May 12, 2009 at 11:45am EDT

• I'm so tired of hearing the self-serving rhetoric that, if it does not come from college and university administrations directly, certainly panders to them. "Our adjuncts do an amazing job." "They're phenomenal teachers, especially given the conditions under which they work." I wish the parents and students who are paying the high tuition could overhear conversations that routinely take place among adjuncts: "I used to have a longer essay section in my exam, but with this new part-time job I have, I no longer have the time and energy to grade those answers in the way they deserve." "Yeah, my exams are now all objective." Or: "I ended class 25 minutes early today." "Oh yeah? why?" "That's all the material I had. I had to prepare for added review sessions at X university and X community college this week, and couldn't really get to finishing my lecture for my class here." Or: "I told my students that my office hours are to be by appointment only and at a place on or outside of campus to be arranged." "Why?" "There are now four adjuncts, including me, in that corner office, and the hours they've designated for their office hours coincide with the hours during which I will be on this campus, so..."

  These reflect actual conversations; they are not embellished. Many adjuncts I know are "amazing" people, but they are not ever given the chance to be truly "amazing" teachers as long as they adjuncts.

  Decreasing investment in college and university faculty should raise grave concern about schools' readiness to provide an education that is actually worth the money that parents and students shell out for it.

• What??
• Posted by Not Sure , Administrator at Small, highly selective, private on May 12, 2009 at 11:45am EDT

• Administrators say that higher education would be better if only we could get rid of tenured faculty? What? I have never, not once, heard that as a policy statement, not even as a wish list, not even sub rosa. Before just jumping on the yeah, yeah, yeah, ... bandwagon, the original statement needs to be clarified, and probably corrected. I don't think anyone, at least not that I have known or have heard, says, or secretly believes, that somehow higher education would be better if only we could get rid of tenured faculty. There are real salary, cost, and flexibility issues between tenured and contingent faculty. For some schools, particularly now, these are big things. But I know of no one saying that higher education, the education that students are getting, would be improvied, overall or in selected places, if only we could just get rid of the tenured faculty, or of tenure itself. Not so!

• Why go to grad school?
• Posted by Confused on May 12, 2009 at 12:45pm EDT

• Reading the article and then the posts, as a non-academic, I'm confused. Why would anyone go to grad school with the intent of working in higher ed? It appears to be some sort of scam being perpetrated on the students. The institutions use them as an indentured work force to teach while they are grad students and then perpetuate that abuse once they graduate. "Sorry, did we forget to mention that you'll be working at $2400 per class with no benefits in perpetuity?” “Oh, you have student loan debt from your undergrad degree? Might we suggest a Sam’s Club membership so you can buy Raman noodles in bulk?”

  There have been other articles that discuss how adjuncts have little to no hope of landing a tenure track position. How long before people figure out that there is no viable economic future when pursuing a graduate degree? (other than those that can be applied in the private sector) I realize life isn’t just about money, but no benefits, no tenure and low pay? That’s a lot to ask of anyone.

• Tenure not necessairly a measure of quality
• Posted by Skeptic on May 12, 2009 at 1:00pm EDT

• All of the comments posted thus far reflect the assumption that tenured faculty equals quality undergraduate education. I disagree. I am someone who attended a private liberal arts college, two community colleges, and a major research university for my undergraduate education and attended a major research university in another part of the country for my master's degree. I also worked as a graduate teaching assistant during my graduate education. As a result, I have a very comprehensive perspective on the relationships between institution type, faculty, tenure, and quality and this is what I have learned. One, the teaching assistants I had in my undergraduate education were just as good, if not better, TEACHERS than the tenured-faculty assigned to teach the courses I took. Two, tenured faculty can behave unprofessionally and be down-right mean to their students and face no repercussions. I encountered this in all of the institutions I attended. Three, through my study of higher education in my graduate program, I am convinced that tenure is an obsolete model that does not benefit faculty. Why? A couple of reasons at least. First, new faculty shouldn't have to to be tied down to one or two employers in their lifetime to make a living. Frankly, their partners or spouses shouldn't have to either. Second, 5 or 7-year contracts would be better a model for all institution types to allow for flexiblity in course offerings on behalf of the institutions and give faculty a chance to apply to institution at the end of a contract if they want a change for whatever reason. And finally, parents do not care if faculty are tenured. How would faculty know what parents want?? Surely their reserach does not include surveying their students' parents on a regular basis to find out. Parents care if their daughter or son is receiving quality teaching and are learning ideas and concepts that they can use in their personal and professional lives, something that's not necessairly a priority of tenure-track or tenured faculty.

  Folks, we all know that tenure is a reward for research productivity (let's hope significant and not the minimum) and to project free speech. Does every faculty member in public colleges and universities need to conduct research in order to be an effective teacher? Some will argue yes until their dying day, but I think not and I imagine there are a lot of people in higher education who would agree with me, but won't speak out because it is not politically incorrect to do so. The duties of the faculty are changing such as teaching more and teaching better. It seems the increase in the use of adjunct faculty employees supports the former, at least, since they do teach more classes than tenured faculty.

  I hope by sharing my perspective that faculty and administrators take away a more comprehensive perspective on the matter of declining tenured-faculty.

• Gender and the Contingent Workforce
• Posted by Caryn McTighe Musil at Association of American Colleges and Universities on May 12, 2009 at 1:00pm EDT

• The AFT report is the latest in a series of clarion calls to be attentive to the seismic shift in the American professoriate. Another key question to pose is which groups of people are getting tenure-track positions and which are in the contingent faculty slots. The Association of American Colleges and Universities focused the Winter 2009 issue of its online newsletter On Campus with Women (www.ocww.org) on how the growth in the contingent faculty is affecting women, who occupy a disproportionate number of “non-tenure-track” positions. With looming budget cuts exacerbating an already critical issue, it’s essential that colleges and universities guard against allowing financial pressures to undermine gender equity—and professional equity for both male and female faculty.

• To Not Sure
• Posted by Curro Romero on May 12, 2009 at 1:15pm EDT

• The for-profit sector is conspicuously missing among the stats in the article. They have 0% tenured/tenure-track faculty.They have already enacted just the desire you have not heard voiced anywhere. The for-profit sector is spearheading higher education, enabled by the system as whole, including pro-corporate lobbyists who help put the squeeze on public funding. It's a beautiful set-up. Make public education flounder and fail in order to open up more space to privatize. Cut faculty rate of pay, abolish governance, create insecurity, widen profit margins. All of higher education appears to be drifting toward that model. Is it good for students? Depends how you look at it. Will it produce a more learned society? I doubt it. And that, quite possibly, is part of the project. At least it has a certain disempowering effect on popular, democratic institutions. A more learned society would not put up with what's been going on in our political economy. It's all of a piece.

• hopeful graduate students
• Posted by Betsy Smith , Adjunct Professor of ESL at Cape Cod Community College on May 12, 2009 at 1:30pm EDT

• To answer, at least in part, Confused's question, there is, indeed, "some sort of scam being perpetrated on the students." The graduate students I've met seem unaware of the situation that will await them when they finish their degrees. I was just at a national conference where many of the papers were given by graduate students who were practicing their orals presentations and hoping to be seen by someone on a hiring committee. From what I could tell, they do not read IHE and they do not have a clue that they will not have a choice of full-time positions when they receive their degrees. The institutions that are preparing them for contingency without warning them of the actual chances of getting a tenure-track position are responsible for knowingly perpetuating a glut of qualified teachers and researchers for whom there are no jobs.

  Another point: at my community college, our mission statement claims that the students' education is our highest priority. This is undoubtedly true of the faculty, both f-t and p-t, but it is clear that the administration's first priority is budgetary, and hiring as many adjuncts at as low a salary as possible (i. e., limiting courses for those at the top of the admittedly meager pay scale and favoring new hires who cost less) is the goal. It is hypocritical to pretend to care about retention and graduation rates but do nothing to improve them. It is hypocritical to say that current adjuncts are good enough to be hired semester after semester at low pay with no benefits but are not good enough for the occasional tenure-track position that opens up. Every time someone is hired from the outside for a full-time position, ten adjunct sections at my institution disappear. The callous treatment of those who have given dedicated service is appalling.

• Injustice
• Posted by CC Full-Timer on May 12, 2009 at 2:45pm EDT

• One important issue missing from the comments is that of justice. What sort of a society pays the people at the top of its major organizations and institutions, be they corporations, foundations, colleges, etc. so well that there is not enough money left for simple things like full-time employment, health insurance, sick days, etc. for the front line workers? I would venture to say that such a society is unjust. Currently, that is our society. This is not just a problem at colleges; it is a problem of inequality across our society. What is happening in higher education is just a part of the general problem. Workers with full-time employment, health insurance, and sick days, etc. are going to lead better lives than workers without these things and, generally, they are going to be more productive.

  Also, please note that the issue of tenure is distinct from the issue of full-time employment. Even if tenure were abolished, that would not mean that college professors should not, in most cases, have full-time employment. Full-time employment shows that society regards the laborer with a certain amount of respect. It allows a person to feel some sense of worth and dignity. When a college pays a person by the hour or course with no benefits and no office, etc. it sends the message that the person is merely a cog in the machine. Currently, our society is treating many like this; people are being sacrificed at the altar of efficiency. Efficiency is important, but justice is more important.

• Class
• Posted by Piss Poor Prof , www.burntoutadjunct.wordpress.com on May 12, 2009 at 5:45pm EDT

• This is not a new trend, nor are these numbers surprising. If you were surprised, you haven't been paying attention.

  It it not, though, about "justice" or fairness at all. What is at stake are the very core notions of what it means to be at university. Professors are the highest caste in our educational hierarchy. They even wear creepy robes with hoods at the ceremonies. It is they who attend the wine/cheese meet-n-greats with new candidates, bored with the current crop of untouchables. Of course they want to hire from without--every one likes new blood.

  The real bemoaning should be centered on the creation (or at least full disclosure of) of full-time positions, which given the overburdened market (see full disclosure call) has no incentive to create. So, study computer science for a job, study the Humanities for a life as a missionary.

• Still skeptic
• Posted by Skeptic on May 12, 2009 at 7:30pm EDT

• I agree with CC Full-Timer's comments that income inequality in higher education represents a larger problem in our society -- at the same I find it amazing that the faculty in my graduate program earn anywhere from $50K-$90K for working 9 months and have the summers off. That doesn't register as injustice with me.

  Also, in response to Betsy's Smith's response about colleges and universities scamming graduate students, faculty must be in on the "game" too because it is not college and university administrators who are recruiting students to graduate programs. Sure, administrators set up the processes and services for applicants to apply, but it is the faculty members who ultimately accept/deny candidates and teach admitted graduate students for at least two to four years. I find it difficult to believe intelligent students entering doctoral programs seeking to teach a subject are so ignorant about the status of needed professors in their subject of interest since these issues have been discussed for so long on the Internet. To suggest otherwise is naive. The reality is that higher education has been/is changing in this country, but some people still think that they are "owed" a tenure track position for completing a doctoral program. Yes, everyone including teachers and professors deserve a minimum salary and benefits but not complete job security which is what tenure is. Not all instructors in higher education need to conduct research and the academic needs of the universities reflect this with the increasing use of adjunct professors.

• The debate continues
• Posted by Still Skeptic on May 12, 2009 at 8:15pm EDT

• I agree with CC Full-Timer's comments that income inequality in higher education represents a larger problem in our society -- at the same I find it amazing that the faculty in my graduate program earn anywhere from $50K-$90K for working 9 months and have the summers off. That doesn't register as injustice with me. Also, in response to Betsy's Smith's response about colleges and universities scamming graduate students, faculty must be in on the "game" too because it is not college and university administrators who are recruiting students to graduate programs. Sure, administrators set up the processes and services for applicants to apply, but it is the faculty members who ultimately accept/deny candidates and teach admitted graduate students for at least two to four years. I find it difficult to believe intelligent students entering doctoral programs seeking to teach a subject are so ignorant about the status of needed professors in their subject of interest since these issues have been discussed for so long on the Internet. To suggest otherwise is naive. The reality is that higher education has been/is changing in this country, but some people still think that they are "owed" a tenure track position for completing a doctoral program. Yes, everyone including teachers and professors deserve a minimum salary and benefits but not complete job security which is what tenure is. Not all instructors in higher education need to conduct research and the academic needs of the universities reflect this with the increasing use of adjunct professors and the increasing number of classes they teach.

• Posted by jim on May 13, 2009 at 5:15am EDT

• Several times in these comments I read the figure of $2400 per course. Please PLEASE tell me where this kind of money is paid. I am a "perpetual adjunct" and I make only $1200 per course. I know that other institutions pay more but to think of $2400 as pitifully low pay is just ridiculous.
  The sad part about the high turnover among the ever-increasing numbers of adjuncts is that the quality of teaching is very uneven. A full-time teacher (tenured or not) has the time to work on teaching skills and many do so. But a teacher carrying a load of 8 courses at several institutions simultaneously and in danger of being let go at every semester's end has no time for such niceties. The reality is that teaching quality is no respecter of rank and some tenured professors are among the worst. But at least they have the time to try to do better.

• Posted on May 13, 2009 at 5:15am EDT

• I recall a line from an old Bob Dylan song ,

  "...bent out of shape by society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher

  but would rather get you down in the hole-

  that he's in..." 

  It's sad to read adjuncts' express that they would rather destroy the profession of college teaching than advocate for a system in which they as professors can be secure and unafraid. These adjuncts apparently want a system in which all should be vulnerable, afraid, and as bitter as they are. Who wants to send their children for their college experience to learn from  a bunch of bitter, insecure people? 

• No Clear Answers
• Posted by Steve , Part-Time Faculty of Education on May 13, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• The state of higher education seems to be hit-or-miss. I have been a student at all levels, have been a tenure track full-time faculty member, and am now part-time adjunct. There are very few absolutes in all of this, except for the fact that adjunct faculty are woefully underpaid, receive no benefits, and often create a lack of cohesiveness within departments. Full-time faculty understand the institution's mission, how the courses fit toward a degree, how they map in terms of total curriculum, know students better, advise the students, participate in institutional review, see one another on a daily basis, sit on committees together, receive funding for continued professional growth... so many things that create strong, cohesive degree programs. As a current adjunct faculty, I come in and teach my courses and go home. I have no idea who these students are that I am teaching. There are no incentives to innovate (other than one's professionalism), no funds for conferences, little to no contact with full-time faculty, no voice in program decisions, and the list can go on and on. Yet, I realize I save the college a great deal of money. Somehow, we need to get away from this model. Yes, part-time faculty can be as good, or better, than some full-time faculty. But, the opposite is also true. Personally, having been full-time in the past, I HATE the disconnect and atrophy that I am now experiencing.

• Enough With the Moaning! Do What it Takes!
• Posted by Clay Scott on May 13, 2009 at 12:15pm EDT

• I am so tired of hearing the perpetual whining and moaning about the poor treatment of adjuncts. No one seems to have the temerity to do what it takes. Reform will only come when those with the power - the people who teach in classrooms of all statuses, including the unemployed - actually act like they have the power and force change.

  What does this mean?

  It means organize. Plan. And strike. Nationwide.

  100% of college administration exists for what happens in the classroom - supposedly. When teaching professionals act like it so will administration.

• Posted by Educator and customer on May 14, 2009 at 5:30am EDT

• With adjuncts making $2000 or so per course, and class sizes going upwards of 50 students per course, we're getting to a point where the cost of instruction per student is less than $40 per course.

  That's great. That means the cost of instruction for a whole college degree is around $1000. More than covered by tax credits alone. College is now free.

  No wonder students and parents no longer have to worry about where they will come up with the money for college. No wonder students are no longer graduating with heavy debts.

• tenured and non-tenured faculty
• Posted by Richard Oestreicher , Assoc. Prof at U. of Pgh. on May 27, 2009 at 9:00pm EDT

• Much of this commentary is wrong headed. The problem of greviously exploited contingent faculty and generally underpaid tenure track faculty (who make dramatically less than similarly educated people in law, corporations, medicine, accounting, etc. ) is a labor problem and an ideological problem. Administrators are bosses. Some of them are well-meaning, dedicated, and responsible bosses strggling to make ends meet in underfunded institutions, but they are bosses. Bosses seek to buy labor as cheaply as possible. The only solution to that in the large scale corporate world (end higher education has been thoroughly corporatized) is industrial unionism. Conflict between exploited adjuncts and tenure track faculty only feed into the divide and conquer tactics of management. Attacking tenure weakens the entire academic labor force. Only unionization will give any of the sectors of academic labor greater bargaining power. Tenured faculty are partly to blame because they buy into the ideology of "professionalism" and think unions are beneath them. They also fail to recognize what any carpenter or bricklayer understands, you maintain wage standards for the craft by limiting the number of apprentices. Graduate students are apprentices. Tenured faculoty need to drastically cut graduate admissions nationwide as part of a larger unionization strategy. The problem, however, is not only economic. Universities are under attack because corporations and political conservatives fear them as the only significant institutions in this society where the production and disemination of information is governed by notions of rationality, evidence and truth rather than profitability. Universities have increased the exploitation of their labor force over the last generation because they are underfunded. They are underfunded because limiting funding is a form of ideological counterattack for corporate and conservative political elites who hate academics who criticize them.

• Let's FACE It
• Posted by Doctor X on May 31, 2009 at 3:00pm EDT

• Let's FACE it. The initiative started by AFT is not in the interest of adjunct faculty. AFT (along with NEA and AAUP, the other principal organizations that represent faculty) have had nicely worded statements on their webistes for years that call for adjunct equity. Unfortunately, none of those organizations has made a major, sustained effort to achieve it. Not has much happened on the local level. FACE is really a campaign to increase full-time positions and unfortunately, even if it works (which is doubtful considering the cost to institutions), the benficiaries will not be current adjunct faculty, especially those holding master's degrees. Universites and four year colleges generally are looking for faculty with research, publication, and more important these days, grant generating success rather than those who have extensive teaching experience.

  Locally, our AFT chapter has expressed its wishes to bring adjunct pay per course to the minimum for newly hired full-time faculty. Unfortunately, in the last two multi-year contracts, instead of decreasing the pay gap, full-time faculty annual received pay increases that percentage-wise were, on average, double those of adjunct faculty. Thus, the pay gap widens. What adjuncts need is strong separate representation regionally and nationally to promote equity in pay and decent working conditions that directly affect the quality of student experience and satisfaction.

• Thanks
• Posted by Tired Adjunct , Adjunct/English & P-T Instructor/English at 4-Year University & Community College on June 17, 2009 at 10:30am EDT

• I don't know how I've gone this long without discovering Inside Higher Ed, but I'm very glad I finally have. This is clearly a hugely valuable resource and I appreciate it very much. I've been adjuncting @ 2 institutions for just 1.5 years now, after teaching as a grad assistant for 2, and am actively trying to figure out where the hell to take my career. The article here, as the others, and especially the dialogue in the comments are hugely valuable to me, not least because they just make me feel less alone in my outrage over the "white-collar Walmart" set-up, as another commenter coined.

  I looooooooooooove teaching, like crazy, and I don't even want a PhD. It took me 9 years to complete my BS and MA altogether, I'm 36, and I'm tired. I just want to work & learn with students about textual meaning-making, and do my best to arm 'em with those literacies that will best empower them to get what they need/want.

  Before this gig, I've been a waitress for going on 20 years, a job I loved, but needed to get out of, due to a chronic injury and a certain amount of going stir crazy within its intellectual limits. Teaching gives me everything I love about waiting, without the arthritis, crazy hours, and bathroom-cleaning. The only seriously huge glaring problem, of course, is that waiting tables, I can and have pulled in a pretty comfortable, lower middle-class income, and get health insurance and a frickin' 401k.

  Something's gotta give, certainly. I have every confidence that somehow, I'll make a career that works enough to avoid true abject poverty when I retire, and I'm even more positive that I will find a way to have fun while I do it. I knew what I was getting into, job-wise, when I went for the MA. But I'll tell you what, if I hear one more tenured/tenure-track faculty at my 4-year institution cluck sympathetically at me about how awful it is that the life of an adjunct is so hard, but take absolutely no advantage of their position to advocate for any change in our treatment, I will lure them to the bar I still work at on the weekends, so I can throw a beer at them on my own turf.

  Phneh. Thanks again for the dialogue up here.

• Posted on September 6, 2009 at 12:15pm EDT

• Money isn't the only thing driving the increase in numbers of non-tenure-track faculty. To understand the dynamics at work in research universities, see a new book, Off-Track Profs, just published by MIT Press.