Not your mom’s professor: The evolution of college educators
As time has marched on, the type of educator found leading classrooms at the nation’s colleges and universities has evolved, according to a new report. After a year of research, The Delphi Project on The Changing Faculty and Student Success (PDF) found that while the setup of the academic structure at U.S. colleges has turned into a three-tier system with tenure-track, full-time nontenure, and adjunct faculty positions, the current system may not be the best for students.
The amount of tenured and tenure-track positions at U.S. colleges and universities has undergone a major overhaul over the last 40 years as seen by data outlined in the report. In 1969, the percentage of tenured and tenure-track positions was over 78 percent, while the percentage of nontenure faculty positions was just under 22 percent. As of 2009, those figures had shifted with tenured and tenure-track faculty making up 33.5 percent of college educators, while those ineligible for tenure had reached 66.5 percent.
“Changes in the composition of the American professoriate toward a mostly contingent workforce are raising important questions about poor working conditions and connections between these conditions and student learning outcomes,” reads the report’s forward. “Research conducted on this issue suggests that these changes in the academic workforce have not been made strategically, but out of crisis and short-term planning. It is important for state and system leaders, administrators, faculty, and policy makers to understand and consider how poor practices (e.g. late scheduling of classes) and lack of policies (e.g. no professional development) commonly associated with nontenure-track faculty roles and working environments may impact student learning. Many policies impede the ability of faculty to provide effective instruction that is aligned with departmental and institutional goals for learning outcomes.”
The report went on to cite potential problems surrounding the accessibility of nontenture track educators to students as well as their lack of voice in policy and course-related issues. The next next phase for the Delphi Project is to determine ways in which to address and improve upon the issues highlighted in the latest report.
“How can we better working conditions [for adjuncts] that can improve student learning? This is one of the main questions we are looking at,” Adrianna Kezar, the project’s director and associate professor of higher education at USC, told InsideHigherEd. “Not only will we look at where we need to go but how we can get there. This is an effort to look at the whole system.”
The project’s next phase will be focused on collecting best practices from various institutions on ways nontenture track faculty have been successfully integrated into institutions of higher education. The latest report also details two main strategies to help improve the conditions for students and faculty, with the first strategy being to create a vision for faculty that will help induce student success. The second strategy surrounds building a strong stakeholder foundation that will assist in the accumulation of data and information that can act as a resource for colleges and universities seeking to improve their structure and student outcomes.
