If you look at the IPEDS data from 2014, out of UChicago’s approximately 2,200 full time instructional faculty, approximately 46% are in non-tenure track positions. These folks will never get tenure because their positions are not tenure-track. One obvious reason could be Chicago uses a large number of non-tenure track lecturers for its professional schools and they might be industry experts who bring real world experience to the class room. But Chicago also has a pretty large number of non-tenure track Profs (22% of all Profs on staff), Associate Profs(46% of all Assoc. Profs on staff) and Assistant Profs (55% of all Asst. Profs on staff) on its instructional staff.
I am assuming that many of these are focused on teaching rather than research. I was wondering how this will affect the educational experience at UChicago.
I assume this would improve teaching quality in undergraduate classes. These faculty members cannot ignore teaching and focus on research. Their jobs depend on teaching well.They can no longer hide behind tenure or teach in a lackadaisical way because they want to focus on their research.
Grade inflation/deflation. I would presume that since these faculty members would be evaluated primarily on their teaching skills, unless they are popular and generally easier on grading, they will get poor evaluations from students and this might affect their employment. Consequently grade inflation and not deflation will be more prevalent at Chicago in the foreseeable future
I wonder how this affects the faculty’s ability to teach and say whatever they want in their classes. If they anger either the students or the administration with their views, they could easily be eased out. This could make them think twice before saying something controversial?
These are of course my speculations. What do others think?
Do we know in what areas those non-tenure track professors teach? E.g., core or major?
Since Chicago has many Hum/Civ/Sos/Art/Lan core courses which are capped at 20 non-tenure track professors make sense there. Do we know if many non-tenure track professors teach upper level courses in major?
My D said her Hum/Civ/Sos/Art/Lan core courses had professors (more) and grad students (fewer). According to her some grad students were better at teaching. It will be hard to draw a conclusion that certain groups are better at teaching. Individual teaching style is also important.
You aren’t allowed to get your grades until you fill out the evaluations, so I don’t agree with that conclusion. I’ve read hundreds of course evaluations of many different courses here, and ease of grading is extremely rarely mentioned. People care far more about whether the course was interesting and the professor engaging and knowledgeable.
But you already know where you are tracking. Its not as if you don’t have your mid term grades, your assignment grades, etc. So a typical student will know if he or she is in running for an A. I have a hard time believing that a student will rate the professor high if that professor is giving them a B+ or lower. Very few students when I went to school would take responsibility of poor grades on their shoulders. Most would at least partially blame the professor for either making the course uninteresting or too hard or being too obtuse or whatever. A student might rate a professor bad even if they dish out a lot of A’s but I doubt many harsh grading professors are going to get glowing evaluations. This is specially true as the profile of students becomes more per-professional as the school becomes more popular
Unfortunately they don’t submit that level of detail to IPEDS. My guess is that the tenured Associate and Full Professors probably don’t teach lower division undergrad courses, but I am speculating here, I could be wrong.
Actually my D had a few famous professors teaching her core courses. It also depends on professors themselves. Some of them like teaching and are good at it.
And yet Paul Sally, an infamously difficult grader, is a UChicago teaching legend. Many professors who have reputations for being fantastic are extremely harsh graders. I’ve seen many, many glowing evaluations for teachers that ended with “by the way, you will have to work for your grade”. I just find your claim doesn’t line up with my experience here.
@HydeSnark Working hard is very different from getting a bad grade in the class. The question is will a significant number of students give professors glowing evaluations even if the professor gives them a C or if their class average is skewed towards a B-/C+. You are asserting that they will and often do based on your experience. I am saying that is highly unlikely based on my experience.
Even if what you say was true five or six years ago, the current student body in Chicago is getting to be very pre-professional (look at the percentage of students going into banking and consulting for example in recent years) and a bad GPA can tank your chances of getting into medical school or other professional schools or certain kinds of jobs. These kids are not going to take kindly to profs who shaft them in grading and given that these professors don’t have tenure, they are very vulnerable to be being removed if they become unpopular. In addition the administration will face a lot of push back from the parents of such students and may find it difficult to attract such students in the future if they don’t ease up on the grading policy. That the administration cares about these students is quite apparent, simply from observing how they are tacitly promoting Greek culture on campus. This demographic is important to the administration at Chicago.
I just don’t see a professor running roughshod over his or her students over an extended period of time and surviving if they don’t already have tenure.
Other students have already indicated that “Grade deflation” at Chicago is a thing of the past. I am just pointing to why that may be happening and maybe accelerating based on the faculty make-up
By the way hasn’t Sally been dead for 3 years and didn’t he have tenure? Completely different.
I don’t believe there are any non-tenured full Professors teaching in the College. If I were guessing, I would guess non-tenured Professors is unique to the medical school. (On further thought, maybe visiting professors are characterized as non-tenure-track. That could produce a decent number, but probably not 22%.)
There are a fairly large number of non-tenure-track Assistant Professors (and maybe Associate Professors) hired to teach Core Hum, Sosc, and maybe Civ classes, alongside tenured Professors and sometimes tenure-track junior faculty and senior grad students.
I concur more and more students at the college are career-focused these days, which may not be a bad thing. But there are still many who are traditional Chicago type students. I would say most students like a high GPA whether career-orientated or not. Still some of them are not too upset getting a bad grade. So professors still have room to operate (give rougher grades). Lol.
How does the process of hiring non-tenure track professor work? Do they have a contract? Does the contract get renewed regularly such as every 5 years? If so professors may not be too cautious since they are under contract. They may be tired of teaching at Chicago for too long and want to move on. Or the college purposely retains some professors (rougher) to be distinguished from other schools?