<p>If you like this type of depressing stats:</p>
<p><a href=“http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/s480x480/27920_4377526790850_535444379_n.jpg[/url]”>http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/s480x480/27920_4377526790850_535444379_n.jpg</a></p>
<p>and for numbers:
[US</a> - Adjunct Project](<a href=“http://www.adjunctproject.com/us/]US”>http://www.adjunctproject.com/us/)</p>
<p>I don’t think it would have changed any of the schools my D applied to. A random sample of LACs on her list had them at 30-35% non-tenure track. My older D graduated from GWU, which they have at about 70%! She did have a lot of part-timers in international affairs and economics, which did not bother her.</p>
<p>My sister is a lecturer at a top 20 university. She conducts research and publishes, and has received awards for teaching and mentorship voted by the students. I’m not sure what the problem is.</p>
<p>One kids school has 40% non tenure track, the other 23%, according to the link.
Some of the most engaged instructors are adjuncts, I wouldn’t use this as a criteria for evaluating schools.</p>
<p>Well, one way to look at it: if you are paying almost 60K/year for your student to be taught largely by poorly paid part-timers, you’re getting ripped off.</p>
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<p>But we don’t know how many of these are “poorly paid part-timers.” At a university with a law school, for example, the non-tenure track/part-time figure would include prominent attorneys and judges who teach a single specialized class and bring a valuable real-world, current-trends perspective to the study of law. Same is true for adjuncts in business schools. Typically they don’t get paid very much, but they do it for the love of the profession and the love of teaching, and they may be the among most effective teachers. </p>
<p>There just aren’t enough filters on the data to have it be very useful.</p>
<p>It is interesting, however, that the top LACs generally have a high percentage of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty, while research universities are much more variable. E.g., Williams 70.3% full-time tenured/tenure-track, Amherst 72.5%, Swarthmore 70.9%; vs. Harvard 63.7%, Yale 48.8%, Princeton 71.1%, and Columbia 49.9%. It’s also interesting that even some of the fanciest research universities have extremely high numbers of part-timers. Among Ivy League schools, for example, the percentage of non-tenure track part-timers ranges from a low of 9.2% at Cornell to a high of 38.8% at Columbia; Penn is also up there at 30.5%. Now the talent pool in the local community is much deeper in NYC and Philadelphia than in Ithaca, so that may be part of it. But it also implies a very different educational model. The local talent pool is also very deep around Boston-Cambridge, but Harvard has only 18.8% part-timers, less than half Columbia’s figure. I’m not saying one model is better, just observing that they’re very different, and perhaps worth further inquiry.</p>
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<p>Who says that they are “poorly paid”? Just because they are not tenure-track, doesn’t necessarily mean that such adjuncts live the life of poverty. Moreover, even if they are “poorly paid” (however defined), that in itself, doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t be/aren’t good teachers. </p>
<p>I still remember by spring “TA” from undergrad. During the course of our semester, he received an offer of a tenure-track position from Princeton. Thus, over the course of a few weeks, he went from TA (‘worse’ than an adjunct according to cc, thus “bad” for me and my college’s numbers) to a tenure-track position teaching Princeton undergrads (good for their numbers).</p>
<p>Adjuncts are not lecturers or short-term contract full-timers. They are by definition part time. They generally don’t get benefits and they are usually restricted to 2 courses per semester.</p>
<p>Specialist adjunct faculty have an appropriate curricular role in helping a college offer electives in subjects requiring up-to-date professional or technical knowledge. However, increasingly adjuncts are simply being used to staff lower-level service courses on the cheap. They generally make $1800-3200 per course. As there is a vast army of unemployed and underemployed PhDs out there, colleges and universities can get away with this exploitative practice.</p>
<p>Students who attend elite universities (HYPS, Columbia et al.) are subsidizing the professional training of graduate students by paying 60K to be taught by TAs. Some of these TAs are terrific, of course; they are future stars. But the university is definitely using its undergraduates as guinea pigs for professors in training. </p>
<p>That is one reason why many professors prefer to send their own children to LACs rather than universities.</p>
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<p>To be clear, however, the data in the linked database do not include TAs. Any teaching done by TAs is in addition to the teaching done by non-tenure track part-time faculty as defined for purposes of this data set.</p>
<p>That’s a good point. All the more reason, though, to wonder who is teaching your undergraduates if they go to a university with large graduate programs. At least TAs get some mentoring and support; they still see themselves as future tenure-trackers. Many adjuncts teaching the same classes are PhDs on the market and are cobbling together a living as “freeway flyers” among institutions in the same geographic area.</p>
<p>I live in the NYC metropolitan area, and I know adjuncts who work at very mediocre regional schools and at places like NYU in the same semester. They teach the same syllabi and have the same level of interest and energy for each of their students. The NYU students are paying 60K and the regional university students are paying 30K for the same professor, the same instruction, the same level of availability and commitment.</p>
<p>I guess before I wrote a check for $60K ro send my kid to Columbia, I’d want to know a lot more about those 38.8% part-time non-tenure track faculty. That figure is awfully high. Here are the comparable for other Ivies, a few other elite private universities, some leading publics, and top LACs:</p>
<p>Percent part-time, non-tenure track:</p>
<p>NYU 56.1%
Georgetown 42.2%
USC 40.3%
Columbia 38.8%
WUSTL 36.5%
Penn 30.5%
Johns Hopkins 28.7%
UC Berkeley 25.8%
Yale 25.4%
Wellesley 25.4%
Vanderbilt 24.2%
University of Chicago 23.6%
Emory 23.4%
UCLA 22.3%
Michigan 19.3%
Harvard 18.8%
Dartmouth 18.5%
Carleton 18.1%
Swarthmore 16.4%
Pomona 16.3%
Princeton 16.1%
MIT 15.4%
Brown 14.8%
Williams 14.2%
Rice 13.6%
Haverford 13.0%
Bowdoin 12.1%
Northwestern 12.0%
Notre Dame 10.4%
Cornell 9.2%
Amherst 8.7%
Middlebury 8.5%
CMC 7.4%
UNC Chapel Hill 7.2%
Stanford 6.7%
UVA 5.4%
Duke 4.7%</p>
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How else would they get trained? What would you have schools do instead?</p>
<p>If I had a prospective student, this is what I would ask (which is what I think is most important):</p>
<p>1) How many of your introductory, basic, or fundamental academic courses are taught by adjunct faculty? (It’s one thing if a small advanced engineering subspecialty seminar is taught by a member of the Army Corps of Engineers; it’s another if Poli Sci 101 is taught by an adjunct).</p>
<p>2) Do adjunct faculty work as academic advisors? (This would concern me greatly).</p>
<p>3) Are certain majors largely taught by adjuncts? (If the college’s psychology department - or what have you - has been gutted of its regular faculty and is largely being sustained by a core of part-timers, I’d worry.)</p>
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<p>I don’t have a problem with universities using TAs on principle. However, people should be aware of the practice. I think many believe that their children are going to get taught by experienced professors with PhDs and multiple publications, and that’s not the case. </p>
<p>My major problem is not with TAs specifically but with the systematic overuse and exploitation of adjuncts to deliver 100-200 level core courses and service courses. It’s a cynical administrative practice. I have no personal criticism of adjuncts themselves, many of whom are fine teachers.</p>
<p>Justmytwocent’s questions above are great ones to ask.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking about majoring in a foreign language or just want to acquire real fluency in one while in college, you should also investigate the use of adjuncts a bit more. I spent several summers at Middlebury’s Language school and they have a policy of NOT using native speakers in intro courses. The logic is that only someone who has struggled to learn how to make a particular sound, use a particular verbal construct, etc. is in a position to empathize with the learner and to explain the concept well. (Someone who was born knowing how to pronounce a French ‘r’ might have a harder time explaining it to someone else). The problem is that in some types of universities
the qualifications for an adjunct language instructor might be quite low, and the fact that someone is a native speaker might be all that is required. In this case, the university appears to be finding a body to teach the class rather than thinking about the long term interests of the students and what would be best for them. Just something to be aware of.</p>
<p>My daughter is an adjunct.</p>
<p>She is 27 years old, has her masters and is 2 years away from completing her PhD dissertation.</p>
<p>She is teaching 3 lower level courses and has over 90 students. Until recently she was also a full time research assistant at another university. The money ran out for that position. </p>
<p>She receives no benefits and pays for her own health insurance. She will have to find another job in addition to her teaching schedule. Adjuncts are cheap labor.</p>
<p>She is passionate about what she does. She is available to her students and very accomodating of their individual circumstances. Her student reviews are always excellent. She has students requesting to take her classes.</p>
<p>I would be delighted if my younger children were taught by an adjunct like her.</p>
<p>
I am currently teaching College Physics I as an adjunct. Does that concern you, and why?
At a previous adjunct position, I spent several years as the Director of the Pre-Engineering 3/2 program, advising the pre-engineering students. What exactly did I do wrong that so concerns you?</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with adjuncts as such, especially if they’re used to supplement a strong roster of full-time faculty. But if they’re used as a substitute for full-time faculty, it can become a problem. There tends to be more turnover among adjuncts, for one thing, which means less faculty continuity and less institutional memory. And since generally it’s only full-time faculty (and often only tenured or tenure-track faculty) that get called on to serve on committees, take on major administrative assignments, supervise dissertations, run research labs, and so on, a low number of full-time faculty will mean those full-time faculty who remain will be spread thin and have less time to teach and interact with undergraduates.</p>
<p>You need to be careful about going just by percentages, however. I was surprised to see that my alma mater, the University of Michigan, has a relatively low percentage of full-time tenured and tenure track faculty compared to other top public research universities (44.4% tenured/tenure-track in non-medical fields, compared to 63.4% at UC Berkeley, 64.7% at UCLA, 66.4% at UNC-Chapel Hill, 61.8% at Wisconsin—but only 45.3% at UVA, similar territory to Michigan). But that percentage figure is highly misleading. Michigan actually ranks at the very top of this group of universities in absolute numbers of tenured/tenure-track faculty (1,844 at Michigan v. 1,667 at Wiscsonsin, 1,373 at UC Berkeley, and 1,447 at UCLA, all roughly comparably sized schools), as well as in its ratio of students (here counting all students, both undergrads and graduate/professional) to tenured/tenure-track faculty (22.9 students per tenured/tenure track faculty at Michigan v. 25.5 at Wisconsin, 26.2 at UC Berkeley, 27.5 at UCLA, and 25.7 at UVA; only UNC-CH clocked in slightly better, at 22.2). The reason Michigan’s percentage of tenured/tenure-track faculty is so low is that it has an exceptionally large number of non-tenured fulltime faculty (1,506 at Michigan v. 485 at Wisconsin, 235 at UC Berkeley, and 297 at UCLA). But viewed in context, it’s apparent that these non-tenured fulltime faculty represent additional faculty resources, supplementing a very strong core of tenured/tenure-track faculty that compares favorably with any institution in its peer group. As a result, Michigan’s ratio of students to fulltime faculty (including here both tenured/tenure track as well as non-tenured) is roughly half that of some schools in its peer group (12.8 students for every full-time faculty member at Michigan v. 22.5 at UC Berkeley and 23.9 at UCLA). To my mind, that’s a big positive, not a negative; it means Michigan has supplemented its core tenured/tenure track faculty, not gutted it.</p>
<p>The schools where these figures might worry me a bit are places like NYU (43,911 total students but only 1,378 tenured/tenure-track faculty, or 31.9 students per tenured/tenure-track faculty), USC (38,010 students but only 1099 tenured/tenure track faculty, or 34.6 students per tenured/tenure-track faculty), and Johns Hopkins (21,139 students but only 667 tenured/tenure-track faculty, or 31.7 students per tenured/tenure-track faculty).</p>
<p>Thank you bclintonk. These are very interesting statistics.</p>
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<p>IMO, the only question I would be concerned about is #3.</p>
<p>I really don’t care much if Poli Sci 101 or math 101 or Psych 101 is taught by an adjunct. Heck many of those courses are ‘waivable’ with AP credit, taught by a a high school teacher, so a college adjunct could be a big improvement. (fwiw: my D’s into psych course was taught by an “adjunct” at her college; the adjunct just happened to be on staff at Harvard Med. Perhaps “low paid,” but he didn’t need the benies. Well worth my money!)</p>
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