Colleges and universities around the country are hiring fewer faculty members on the tenure track, choosing instead to hire contingent faculty, which include adjunct professors and lecturers.
As of 2007, full-time tenured faculty made up only 21.3 percent of faculty nationwide, down from 36.5 percent in 1975, according to the Department of Education. Full-time, non-tenure-track faculty and part-time faculty together made up 68.8 percent of national faculty in 2007, compared to a combined total of just 43.2 percent in 1975.
This trend is often attributed to the lower cost of part-time and untenured faculty, said John Curtis, director of the department of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors. Part-time faculty do not receive full benefits and are often hired on a per-course or per-credit basis at "rates that are well below those paid to full-time faculty," he said.
The current economic crisis will "exacerbate this situation" by providing colleges and universities with "the rationale for a further decrease of workplace security," wrote Steffen Hantke, a professor at Sogang University in South Korea, in an e-mail to The Herald. Hantke co-edited a book about the struggles of adjunct faculty.
But Brown and other top-tier institutions buck the national trend. Of Brown's 689 regular faculty members, 637 are professors, associate professors or assistant professors, meaning they either have tenure or are on the tenure track, according to the Dean of the Faculty's Web site. The remaining 7.5 percent of regular faculty members are lecturers and senior lecturers.
In addition to regular faculty, Brown currently has 200 to 300 visiting and adjunct faculty members, Associate Dean of the Faculty Elizabeth Doherty said.
Unlike many other schools, Brown has a student body whose size remains relatively constant from year to year and a commitment to using regular faculty in teaching "whenever possible," Doherty said.
Other top schools are similarly situated. Of Stanford's regular faculty - which does not include faculty at its Medical Center - 54 percent are tenured and an additional 16 percent are on the tenure track, information on the university's Web site shows. Around 62 percent of Dartmouth's total faculty are either tenured or on the tenure track, according to that school's Web site.
Harvard and Yale both employ around 68 percent of their regular faculty in tenured or tenure-track positions, according to their respective Web sites. Those figures do not include research faculty or academic support personnel.
Curtis said research universities often employ graduate students to teach courses, decreasing their need to hire non-tenure-track faculty. Top-tier universities also employ professors in full-time, non-tenure track positions as research faculty - positions that are not always included when schools calculate their regular faculty numbers.
Brown does not track the number of adjunct and visiting faculty members, Doherty said, but the number of regular faculty has gone up so fast that "it would be hard to imagine that adjuncts and visitors would have increased at anywhere near that rate," she said.
In addition to allowing institutions to "contain or control the cost" of faculty, having fewer tenured positions gives institutions flexibility to adjust the size of the faculty to enrollment levels, said Professor of Education Kenneth Wong. Hiring faculty on fixed-year contracts is also a "flexible way to bring in new ideas to the teaching program of those institutions," said Wong, who serves as chair of his department.
But the use of non-tenure track and part-time faculty can have negative consequences for students, Curtis said. Since non-tenure track faculty members often hold other jobs, they are less available to students, which places the burden of advising and writing letters of recommendation almost entirely on tenure-track faculty, he said. Also, without the protections of tenure, contingent faculty may be less willing to address controversial issues or "challenge students to really take on tough questions," he said.
Nonetheless, many faculty members choose not to be on the tenure track for various reasons. Instructors who are solely interested in teaching sometimes choose not to be on the tenure track, since review for tenure focuses on a professor's publications and scholarly efforts in addition to teaching.
Because contingent faculty are evaluated on teaching ability and student enrollment, adjunct faculty members are "often among our best teachers," said Professor of Economics Andrew Foster, who also chairs the Department of Economics.
At Brown, many adjunct faculty members are hired to teach specific classes about their field of work, Wong said, citing professional performers, teachers and judges as examples of professionals who have taught as adjunct faculty members at Brown.
Brown has a hiring freeze in place for staff and administrative positions, but not for faculty, and it will continue to hire tenure-track professors. If any group is affected by changes in hiring, Doherty said, "it's more likely to be on the visitor and adjunct group." If a department wanted to hire a visiting or temporary faculty member, the University would be more rigorous in determining the necessity of the hire, she said.
