Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns: "Professors with tenure a distinct minority"

[DeepModem Mom]

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

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.

It has become so extreme, however, that some universities are pulling back, concerned about the effect on educational quality. Rutgers University 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....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/education/20adjunct.html?ref=todayspaper

[HereSince1628]

1. The Walmart Business plan has long been a model for Higher Ed...

I don't expect it to change. The last University Faculty Union I was in (MnSCU) busied itself creating rules that used instructors as sacrifices to the gods of flexibility in the business plan.

Regardless of what formula is invented the outcome will be the same, the part-time people will be the ones that are most heavily exploited.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. We owe a lot of this to Reagan and especially Newt Gingrich ...

with all his claptrap about the "marketplace of ideas", whose meaning he managed to pervert completely. "The customer is always right" does NOT work in academia, and the schools I see kowtowing to the whining of disgruntled students/parents are in an unwinnable contest to see who can drop standards the lowest. There is MUCH more to seeking a good education than getting the lowest price, which is the top priority for many state schools (present empoloyer an extreme example).

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I was in that trap 30 years ago, as were many young PhDs.

We were "temporary academic staff"--instructors, not assistant professors. We couldn't hold a given position for more than 3 years or the university would have to start paying benefits, so we moved from job to job, a class of nomadic academic ne'er-do-wells. We were overloaded with teaching & had no lab space or time to do research, so our publication rate suffered, making us less and less attractive for tenure-track positions.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Some in my family are journalists; same thing --

"part-time" for a long time doing a full-time job, so no benefits had to be paid them.

[yurbud]

7. one of my colleagues said they have done the same to TV news

so you get a degree that costs a lot of money, then you never make the money to pay it back.

It's essentially sharecropping for whoever gave you student loans.

[nealmhughes]

4. Now the academic libraries' deans are getting on the "business model."

The number of "part time" and "temporary" positions are astonishing right now -- trumped only by the "non-professional" positions. I was so fed up at the last job I had I actually asked the director "Shall I start doing the men's room cleaning next?" Actually I would have been happier in the service union than in a non-tenure track troika of 2 dept heads and one director.
I actually wonder why the schools just don't put all student services on video conference and outsource it all to India. Face-to-face? Why bother? Don't the kids love the googles and internets?

[eppur_se_muova]

14. "put all ... on video ... and outsource it all to India" That is the next step.

"Distance learning" is the thin end of the wedge. It may sound like a boon to rural students, but anything that can be transmitted over the internet can also be captured for later playback. And faculty have little control -- and may not even be informed -- when their lectures are being taped.

Faculty may have to start joining the Screen Actors Guild and demanding scale payment for each recorded lecture. Makes it easier to understand what the current writers' strike is about.

ETA: Too late to rec, but this is something that will be needing a LOT more attention.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. This summarizes why I got out of academia

After my last full-time job ended, I looked at the other jobs that were available to me: mostly one-year or two-year jobs for low pay or in undesirable locations. I'd already gone through the routine of teaching 2/3 time for half-time money and no benefits, so I took the plunge and became a free-lance translator.

I miss having academic colleagues, but I do not miss the bureaucracy or the spoiled students who are interested only in grades.

[Ellen Forradalom]

9. And that is why I did not touch academia with a barge pole.

I did the math. Not worth it.

[yurbud]

12. what do you do instead?

[Ellen Forradalom]

13. Perl programming and operations support

Nothing riveting, but it's a job.

[yurbud]

6. This is my life. I taught college for seven years before I was offered health insurance

I have gaps in income, don't know how many classes I'll have from semester to semester, and worked at as many as four campuses in three different districts in one semester.

Here in California, we have a law that only allows us to work 60% at any one district, and can make as little as 25% as much as our full time colleagues for teaching the same class.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Thanks to you, yurbud, and others who've posted their experience in this thread. nt

[JPZenger]

10. If you offer tenure, you can get the best

So many colleges and universities are filling their ranks with part-time Rent-a-Profs with few benefits. However, that opens up opportunities.

Over the last few years, Temple University, a public university in Phila., has been increasing its enrollment (and the quality of its applicants). They also had large number of retirees. As a result, they were one of the few institutions that had many openings for tenure track faculty. Therefore, they have been able to hire the cream of the crop - because there were so many applicants seeking so few tenure track positions.

This situation was reported in the Phila. Inquirer about a year ago.

[yurbud]

11. most of us patch together several part time jobs, but I disagree that full time are cream

since administrators have a say in hiring they often pass up experienced people for those straight out of grad school since they figure they will be more docile.

[nealmhughes]

16. Docility is key. Why, those uppity just grads with their pretensions of actually being part of the

faculty! Meanwhile when a student complains that their 302 class was just a repeat of 215, do you tell them, "What do you expect? Prof. X hasn't read anything in ten years nor written anything in fifteen." Then quietly say "but she has had tenure for sixteen years and is in like Flynn with both the dean and the provost."
What disgusts me is the extreme vaugeness of academic job descriptions for librarians. Yes, I can update your webpage, but it won't be pretty, most likely. Yes, I am of course 'familiar' with all the databases, but wouldn't touch 2/3 of them with a ten foot pole, and I don't know why you waste the money on them. Cataloguing, yes, I had a class in it. I find it as arbitrary as do the students, but what can I do about it, and if you think I am going to spend my day at a keyboard with cutter charts and the big red books when I can upload that crap from OCLC, you have another thing coming...that's a clerk's job, and they are in the union.
Oh, did I tell you about my forthcoming article in Philosophy and Practice that marries Ackoff's Complex System Theory to the last ten years worth of research at Institute de recherches informatique Toulouse and conclude that I find a lack of formal nomenclature a misservice and a concentration on individual components of the scholarly mechanism a diss to the students and their instructors and propose a unified "information literacy" class that actually shows what the kids are purporting to do with an acceptable paper as telos? Oh, $35.5, no travel expenses, but maybe the first month's rent and security advanced to me and BCBS? OK, I'll take it. One month later, "What do you mean I am on the history and education and bioethics committees? I do southern history and religion, and you said that was great but now Greta gets to do religion and southern history because she is comfortable with it and by the way, why does she only work 1:8 Sundays and I do four and she has a new Mazda Miata and I have a 23 year old Volvo?"
Oh, well, that mythic small esteemed liberal arts school in the Midwest or New England or P. NW is out there and they do want me and will give me tenure, and I will perform like a mofo. Oh, wait, all those slots are entry level with guys with post docs from Syracuse and Indiana and 5 year fellowships endowed by the ALA, oh well, where are the community colleges again? What about an excitng career in children's story telling and home work help?