Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns

The New York Times


November 20, 2007
Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns
By ALAN FINDER

DEARBORN, Mich. — Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on the country’s campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled, according to federal figures analyzed by the American Association of University Professors.

Elaine Zendlovitz, a former retail store manager who began teaching college courses six years ago, is representative of the change. Technically, Ms. Zendlovitz is a part-time Spanish professor, although, in fact, she teaches nearly all the time.

Her days begin at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, with introductory classes. Some days end at 10 p.m. at Oakland Community College, in the suburbs north of Detroit, as she teaches six courses at four institutions.

“I think we part-timers can be everything a full-timer can be,” Ms. Zendlovitz said during a break in a 10-hour teaching day. But she acknowledged: “It’s harder to spend time with students. I don’t have the prep time, and I know how to prepare a fabulous class.”

The shift from a tenured faculty results from financial pressures, administrators’ desire for more flexibility in hiring, firing and changing course offerings, and the growth of community colleges and regional public universities focused on teaching basics and preparing students for jobs.

But it has become so extreme that some universities are pulling back, concerned about the effect on educational quality. Rutgers University in New Jersey agreed in a labor settlement in August to add 100 tenure or tenure-track positions. Across the country, faculty unions are organizing part-timers. And the American Federation of Teachers is pushing legislation in 11 states to mandate that 75 percent of classes be taught by tenured or tenure-track teachers.

Three decades ago, adjuncts — both part-timers and full-timers not on a tenure track — represented only 43 percent of professors, according to the professors association, which has studied data reported to the federal Education Department. Currently, the association says, they account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and universities, both public and private.

John W. Curtis, the union’s director of research and public policy, said that while the number of tenured and tenure-track professors has increased by about 25 percent over the past 30 years, they have been swamped by the growth in adjunct faculty. Over all, the number of people teaching at colleges and universities has doubled since 1975.

University officials agree that the use of nontraditional faculty is soaring. But some contest the professors association’s calculation, saying that definitions of part-time and full-time professors vary, and that it is not possible to determine how many courses, on average, each category of professor actually teaches.

Many state university presidents say tight budgets have made it inevitable that they turn to adjuncts to save money.

“We have to contend with increasing public demands for accountability, increased financial scrutiny and declining state support,” said Charles F. Harrington, provost of the University of North Carolina, Pembroke. “One of the easiest, most convenient ways of dealing with these pressures is using part-time faculty,” he said, though he cautioned that colleges that rely too heavily on such faculty “are playing a really dangerous game.”

Mark B. Rosenberg, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, said that part-timers can provide real-world experience to students and fill gaps in nursing, math, accounting and other disciplines with a shortage of qualified faculty. He also said the shift could come with costs.

Adjuncts are less likely to have doctoral degrees, educators say. They also have less time to meet with students, and research suggests that students who take many courses with them are somewhat less likely to graduate.

“Really, we are offering less educational quality to the students who need it most,” said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, noting that the soaring number of adjunct faculty is most pronounced in community colleges and the less select public universities. The elite universities, both public and private, have the fewest adjuncts.

“It’s not that some of these adjuncts aren’t great teachers,” Dr. Ehrenberg said. “Many don’t have the support that the tenure-track faculty have, in terms of offices, secretarial help and time. Their teaching loads are higher, and they have less time to focus on students.”

Dr. Ehrenberg and a colleague analyzed 15 years of national data and found that graduation rates declined when public universities hired large numbers of contingent faculty.

Several studies of individual universities have determined that freshmen taught by many part-timers were more likely to drop out.

“Having an adjunct in a course is not necessarily bad for you, but having too many adjuncts might be,” said Eric P. Bettinger, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Students say they can often tell when a professor is part-time. Mike Brennan, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, said the courses taught by adjuncts tend to be more basic and the exams less challenging. “They have so many classes that they give tests that are easier to grade,” Mr. Brennan said.

Carly Matkovich, a senior at the university, said she had bonded more with her part-time teachers, in part because they have more practical experience. But it is usually hard to find time to talk with them outside class. “They’re never around,” Ms. Matkovich said. “It does make me feel kind of cheated.”

At some departments the proportion of faculty who are tenured is startlingly low. The psychology department at Florida International University in Miami has 2,400 undergraduate majors but only 19 tenured or tenure-track professors who teach, according to a department self-assessment. It is possible for a psychology major to graduate without taking a course with a full-time faculty member.

“We’re at a point where it is extreme,” said Suzanna Rose, a psychology professor who said she stepped down as department head in August, primarily because she could not hire as many tenure-track professors as she thought the department needed. “I’m just very concerned about the quality.”

Ronald Berkman, the provost at Florida International, disputed her numbers, saying the psychology department has 23 professors who are tenured or tenure track and 5 full-time teachers on contracts. The department is conducting a search for three more tenure-track professors, Dr. Berkman said.

“Which is not to say that they don’t need more, which they do,” he said.

Tenure, a practice carried from Germany to the United States, was designed to guarantee academic freedom to professors by protecting them against dismissal. Some argue that it also protects incompetent or lazy teachers and sometimes leaves universities saddled with professors in disciplines that have lost currency.

The lack of tenure can leave adjuncts vulnerable. In a number of cases, professors outside the tenure track have been dropped after run-ins with administrators over everything from grading to opinion articles in newspapers.

Several unions have been organizing adjunct faculty in recent years. In Michigan, the American Federation of Teachers has successfully organized full-time, nontenure-track professors at Eastern Michigan University, as well as part-time and full-time adjuncts at the University of Michigan campuses in Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint.

“They are so exploited, the only difficulty in organizing adjuncts is finding them,” said David Hecker, president of the teachers federation.

Keith Hoeller, who has been teaching philosophy for 17 years as a part-timer in Seattle, described it this way: “It’s a caste system, and we are the untouchables of academia.”

Aletia Droba taught for 10 years as a part-time philosophy professor in the Detroit area. She said she was paid as little as $1,400 a course at community colleges and as much as $2,400 a class at universities.

Some semesters, Ms. Droba said, she taught as many as seven courses at four colleges, including across the border in Canada. This fall, she landed a full-time, non-tenure track job. She will teach five courses in the fall and spring combined — less than the number she often taught in a single semester as a part-timer.

Ms. Droba will not miss the constant driving that a part-timer does, shuttling among universities. “My students used to ask me how come I knew so much about current affairs,” she said. “And I’d say, ‘I listen to NPR all day.’ ”

 

Interesting Article

This article is a bit superfluous but has some good points. For online students, the differences might be less visible to the student. Except for one, I believe all my Masters' degree instructors were adjunct and had full-time careers in business and industry. That was a positive, in my view. But if you were a 20-year old student at a B&M campus, you might want the availability of a full-time instructor.

From a faculty member's point of view, being an adjunct is a lot of work for low pay, if you are doing it for a full-time career. In my case, I do it for a love of teaching combined with the joy of learning a new skill, plus some extra cash.

One could argue that if there were less adjuncts and more tenure track positions the quality of education would be higher. The universities just don't want to spend the money.

Although it might cut down on my ability to work as an adjunct, I think that there should be more tenure-track positions and that the trend toward adjuncts should be halted. I just don't see it happening.

 

It is obvious that the administrative gnomes of academia invented the adjunct position as an excuse to be a bunch of cheap b@$t@rds ... and as a way for an older generation to hand the younger generation a worse deal. Are people just discovering this now?

 

Insightful as ever...thanks Ted.

 

I came across this letter from another discusson board, and decide to share it with the members here for your comment

November 25, 2007
Letters
The Plight of the Part-Time Professor

To the Editor:

Re Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns at Colleges (front
page, Nov. 20):

Many adjunct faculty members are not just eminently qualified but also
dedicated and experienced teachers. The quality of adjunct teaching is
related to an overload of classes, a lack of department support and a
lack of job security.

The best solution is not necessarily, as several tenured faculty
members in the article suggest, to create more tenure-track positions,
although this is a fine idea. A better one, though, might be for our
universities to pay adjunct faculty members higher salaries, give them
benefits and treat them with more dignity at work.

Charlotte Boulay
Ann Arbor, Mich., Nov. 20, 2007
The writer is a full-time adjunct faculty member teaching composition
and creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.


To the Editor:

This is the dirty little secret of higher education.

In my experience, teaching college in New York City, 70 to 80 percent
of professors teach on an adjunct basis " with no health care,
retirement benefits or job security. I have taught six courses at
three colleges in one semester. I have been scheduled to teach courses
that were taken from me the night before a class was to begin, because
a tenured faculty members class failed to fill. I have developed
courses, only to see a tenured person teach my course.

Students are shortchanged because our days on campus are so limited.
Adjuncts rarely receive proper support services and are sometimes
treated with disrespect " despite our advanced degrees and other
accomplishments.

It is a disgrace. After 14 years of teaching college with no health
insurance, I decided that was enough. I don't teach college anymore.

Ellen Goldin
Brooklyn, Nov. 20, 2007



To the Editor:

The decline of the tenure track does concern me " but only because it
isn't declining fast enough. In my years as a student and as a
graduate teaching assistant, I have witnessed the abandonment of
teaching missions in favor of research-focused tenured faculty.

While there exist brilliant academics who are dedicated to higher
education, they seem to be in the minority. Instead we have tenured
faculty members who have neither the ability nor the desire to engage
in the development and presentation of curriculums.

In such a climate, I think motivated and actively engaged adjunct
faculty will continue to serve as superior educators.

Michael L. Jacobs
Rochester, Nov. 20, 2007


To the Editor:

While parents of college students often look at the student-teacher
ratio as the primary measure of the quality of instruction their
children receive, this figure can be misleading. The ratio of
full-time to part-time, or adjunct, faculty will tell even more about
an institutions commitment to its teachers and, by extension, to
its students.

Many professional associations, like the Coalition on the Academic
Workforce, have begun advocating for reform to ensure that all
colleges have a critical mass of full-time faculty members and to
integrate adjunct faculty members more fully into the college community.

Rosemary G. Feal
Executive Director, Modern
Language Association of America
New York, Nov. 20, 2007


To the Editor:

Non-tenure-track faculty members often teach a full load (or more), in
scattered institutions and in disciplines (humanities and social
sciences) where grading is onerous. Beyond their low salaries, they
often lack benefits, offices, collegial support and the opportunity to
pursue scholarship that strengthens their credentials and skills.

Even when tenure-track positions open in departments where they are
employed, non-tenure-track faculty members are rarely hired, but
instead are told they are not the right fit or they have yet to publish.

I urge young colleagues who earn their doctorates and face such
prospects to consider fields other than academia.

Diane Willen
Catonsville, Md., Nov. 20, 2007
The writer is professor emerita of history at Georgia State University.


To the Editor:

Adjunct faculty members lack the protection of academic freedom that
tenure guarantees. As a result, instruction has become duller, less
innovative and politically crimped, especially in the public sector.
Students can tell the difference, and they are the big losers.

Philip Y. Nicholson
Amityville, N.Y., Nov. 20, 2007
The writer is chairman of the department of history, political science
and geography at Nassau Community College.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

 

I agree with this. Even when tenure-tracks become available, adjunct are seen as cheap and inferior labor so many times are not taken into consideration for tenure tracks. The logic is, if I have you, why should I pay more for the same work that I already have for cheap? Universities normally use their tenure track openings to bring faculty from "better" universities in order to improve their image. When tenure tracks become available, the universities tend to ignore adjunct candidates as they feel that the new tenure track opening can bring them new fresh blood to the school.

This has been addressed by many part time faculty unions that force faculties to give priority to part time faculty rather than taking a fresh new graduate from a top school. I believe this would be the decent thing to do for those that have paid their duties and deserve a better chance.

 

An illustration: today a top 50 university announced the addition of a senior instructor to the staff of its telecommunications program.

His CV? A PhD in electrical engineering from a top engineering school, 20 publications over 24 years, six patents acquired over 14 years R&D experience with two industry-leading telecom equipment manufacturers, the last at which he developed and conducted external customer-facing training on a major cellular technology. Early in his postgraduate career he earned fellowships with NASA and the NSF.

All that....for a non-tenure track position.

 

I have served for many years as both a full-time and adjunct faculty (sometimes simultanteously). Currently, I am a full-time administrator of learning technologies at a state university, where I also teach as an adjunct. I also teach online courses for a university 2,000 miles away.

Some of the best teachers that I have seen in my 20 years in higher education are adjunct faculty. These are usually highly capable people who are working professional in the filed that they teach. This is the good news. The bad news is that colleges and universities seldom benefit from the talent and experience of adjunct faculty outside the classroom. Adjunct faculty are generally hired and paid to teach--nothing more. Adjuncts are rarely (if ever) given the time and compensation to perform curricular and program development and review, serve on academic committees or have a voice at their institutions.