Part III: Ignore the Rankings and Look at the Data (Faculty Resources)

College Search & Selection
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<p>Thank you so much OP those are exactly the critera that are important to my boys. I will say that my son is taking a course at summer school by an "Ivy Lecturer" and she is wonderful. His TA- a grad student equally so. Enthusiastic, demanding and fair. I used to freak out about the whole TA thing but then thought of the awesome kids our Universities are putting out and how great to have a young, enthusiastic person - not burnt out from life- who has learned from some of the greatest minds- both classmates and profs.</p>

<p>But thanks again for the info...it's another great way to look at things-</p>

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<p>this correlates with what I stated in post #9, that there is an inverse relationship between sudden increases in a college/university's faculty/student ratio and its overall USNews faculty resouces rank. The fact that the increases tend to take effect at the lowest tenure/non-tenure track level, dilutes the college's average faculty compensation. It's really a double edge sword until a few years hence and some well-timed promotions begin to raise the average again.</p>

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<p>collegehelp, thanks for this info (post #15). This is really interesting, another indication of just how "squishy" the supposedly "objective" data US News uses in calculating faculty resources really are. </p>

<p>"Instructors," "lecturers" and the like are a mixed bag. Some are people with specialized skills who are brought in to teach the things they know, but don't need or want to be on an academic tenure track: professional writers brought in to teach creative writing classes, for example, or artists brought in to teach art classes, or experienced instructors in foreign languages who are perfectly competent to teach intro- and intermediate-level language courses but are never going to contribute in a significant way to scholarship on the language and culture. I think there's a legitimate place for these kinds of instructors.</p>

<p>Others are part of a distinct academic underclass, "lumpen academics," if you will. They often would prefer to be on a tenure track, but are unable to land those positions. They're often hired to teach entry- and intermediate-level undergraduate courses but are not considered promising enough as scholars to be offered tenure-track positions. They're generally poorly paid relative to tenured and tenure-track faculty, they have no say in questions of institutional governance, no job security, etc. Some may be very good teachers, others less so. Some are the left-over products of second- and third-tier graduate programs, some the least successful products of the top grad programs, the ones who didn't land tenure-track positions out of grad school, or who were denied tenure someplace and can't get back on the tenure track elsewhere. They're cheap, they're abundant, and they're increasingly used (some would say abused) at a lot of institutions as cannon fodder to teach undergrad courses that need to be taught but that no one on the tenured/tenure-track faculty can be bothered to teach. As I understand it, however, so long as they're full-time they count toward an institution's student/faculty ratio, they help bring down average class size, and so on. And I can't prove it but I'll bet anything their modest salaries don't count toward the "average faculty salary" figure used as a separate element in the USNews "faculty resources" rating, because the only comparative faculty salary figures I've ever seen have been for assistant, associate, and full professors. </p>

<p>If that right, it would also modify what johnwesley says ^ about the inverse correlation between student/faculty ratio and USNews faculty resources rank: the alternative way to bring down your s/f ratio without hurting your USNews faculty resources rank is to hire a bunch of non-tenure track instructors whose lowly wages won't pull down the mean salary you pay to tenured and tenure-track faculty. And if that's right, it creates a pretty strong incentive for rankings-conscious college administrators to expand the use of these lumpen academics; the real quality of undergraduate education may suffer, but no one will notice because the whole world will be bedazzled by your rising USNews ranking, and unsuspecting kids and their equally unsuspecting parents will think they're getting in on something special.</p>

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<p>For the record and for a more complete comparison, here are the numbers for the USNWR Top 50 national universities for class sizes. The publics are in caps and colleges that have been recognized for Classroom Teaching Excellence are starred (***).</p>

<p>Rank , % of classes under 20 students </p>

<pre><code> NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
</code></pre>

<p>1 , 76% Yale***
2 , 75% Caltech***
3 , 74% U Penn
3 , 74% Northwestern***
5 , 73% Stanford***
5 , 73% Duke***
5 , 73% Wash U***
8 , 72% Princeton***
8 , 72% U Chicago***
8 , 72% Tufts***
11 , 71% Columbia
12 , 69% Harvard***
13 , 68% Brown***
14 , 67% Vanderbilt***
15 , 66% Johns Hopkins
15 , 66% Emory***
15 , 66% Carnegie Mellon
15 , 66% Lehigh
15 , 66% Syracuse
20 , 64% Dartmouth***
21 , 63% Brandeis
21 , 62% Rice***
21 , 62% USC
21 , 62% U Rochester
25 , 61% MIT
25 , 61% UC BERKELEY
27 , 60% Cornell
28 , 59% NYU
29 , 58% Georgetown***
29 , 58% Case Western
31 , 57% Wake Forest***
31 , 57% Tulane
33 , 55% Notre Dame***
34 , 54% UCLA
35 , 50% UC SANTA BARBARA
36 , 49% U VIRGINIA***
37 , 47% U NORTH CAROLINA***
37 , 47% W&M***
39 , 45% U MICHIGAN
40 , 44% UC IRVINE
41 , 43% U WISCONSIN
41 , 43% UCSD
43 , 42% GEORGIA TECH
43 , 42% Rensselaer
45 , 39% Boston Coll***
45 , 39% U FLORIDA
47 , 37% U ILLINOIS
48 , 36% U WASHINGTON
49 , 35% U TEXAS
50 , 34% UC DAVIS
51 , 30% PENN STATE</p>

<p>Rank , % of classes with over 50 students </p>

<pre><code> NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES
</code></pre>

<p>1 , 2% Wake Forest***
2 , 4% U Chicago***
2 , 4% Lehigh
4 , 5% Tufts***
5 , 6% Duke***
5 , 6% Emory***
5 , 6% Vanderbilt***
8 , 7% Georgetown***
8 , 7% W&M***
8 , 7% Tulane
11 , 8% Yale***
11 , 8% U Penn
11 , 8% Caltech***
11 , 8% Dartmouth***
11 , 8% Northwestern***
11 , 8% Syracuse
17 , 9% Columbia
17 , 9% Wash U***
17 , 9% Rice***
17 , 9% Carnegie Mellon
17 , 9% Brandeis
17 , 9% Boston Coll***
23 , 10% Princeton***
23 , 10% Stanford***
23 , 10% U Rochester
23 , 10% Rensselaer
27 , 11% Brown***
27 , 11% Johns Hopkins
27 , 11% Notre Dame***
27 , 11% U NORTH CAROLINA***
27 , 11% Case Western
32 , 12% USC
32 , 12% NYU
34 , 13% Harvard***
35 , 14% MIT
35 , 14% UC BERKELEY
37 , 15% U VIRGINIA***
38 , 16% Cornell
39 , 17% U MICHIGAN
39 , 17% U WASHINGTON
39 , 17% UC SANTA BARBARA
42 , 18% U WISCONSIN
42 , 18% U ILLINOIS
42 , 18% PENN STATE
45 , 19% UC IRVINE
46 , 20% UCLA
46 , 20% GEORGIA TECH
46 , 20% U FLORIDA
49 , 23% U TEXAS
50 , 28% UC DAVIS
51 , 31% UCSD</p>

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<p>
[quote]

Others are part of a distinct academic underclass, "lumpen academics," if you will. They often would prefer to be on a tenure track, but are unable to land those positions. They're often hired to teach entry- and intermediate-level undergraduate courses but are not considered promising enough as scholars to be offered tenure-track positions. They're generally poorly paid relative to tenured and tenure-track faculty, they have no say in questions of institutional governance, no job security, etc. Some may be very good teachers, others less so. Some are the left-over products of second- and third-tier graduate programs, some the least successful products of the top grad programs, the ones who didn't land tenure-track positions out of grad school, or who were denied tenure someplace and can't get back on the tenure track elsewhere. They're cheap, they're abundant, and they're increasingly used (some would say abused) at a lot of institutions as cannon fodder to teach undergrad courses that need to be taught but that no one on the tenured/tenure-track faculty can be bothered to teach. As I understand it, however, so long as they're full-time they count toward an institution's student/faculty ratio, they help bring down average class size, and so on. And I can't prove it but I'll bet anything their modest salaries don't count toward the "average faculty salary" figure used as a separate element in the USNews "faculty resources" rating, because the only comparative faculty salary figures I've ever seen have been for assistant, associate, and full professors.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>As a Yale student I have had a decent number of classes taught by non-tenure track faculty, so I thought I'd discuss a bit what that means. There are a couple types of this sort of faculty. The first are language instructors, where I think we can probably agree that it doesn't matter too much. That these instructors are generally amazingly good confirms this. I'm not sure how they count in the numbers (and some - the heads of language programs - actually do have some sort of tenure).</p>

<p>Another sort are spouses of regular faculty. For instance, at Yale, some prominent members of the history department (which I'm most familiar with as a history major) have spouses who are hired as lecturers rather than tenure track professors. I haven't taken classes with any of this sort, but I've heard good things about some of them, less good about others.</p>

<p>The last type, and I think the one BClintock is trying to talk about, actually have better credentials than he gives them credit for. My exposure to these young faculty who haven't found tenure track jobs has been entirely in the context of Directed Studies (wikipedia it for those who aren't familiar). The ones who taught me all had top-flight PhDs (think Harvard and Princeton, Pittsburgh in philosophy) and actually top-flight undergrad degrees as well - at Yale, a lot of them seemed to be former Yale undergrads. One had a husband in grad school at Yale - probably took an adjunct job there so she could be in the same city (ie, it doesn't mean she couldn't find a regular job). A couple were post-docs right out of PhD programs. This latter led me to believe that they might actually have been people who could have got tenure track jobs at lower-tier universities (and I mean actually lower tier, not the non-Ivy that passes for lower-tier on CC), or non-research oriented colleges, but didn't want those jobs. So they came back to their alma mater to work for a few years. I don't know what they're getting paid (and I think the use of faculty like this, almost certainly at low pay, is definitely problematic), but I do know that they weren't, on average, any worse than other faculty of a similar age. That is, being able to take classes with far more experienced scholars at the top of their field is better, but whether a tenure-track assistant professor is better than a lecturer is unclear.
In general, I think this is all less problematic from an undergrad's perspective than one might think. I haven't taken lecture classes taught by this sort of faculty, and their ability to increase the number of small seminars available is certainly a plus. Admittedly, as someone planning to enter academia, I wish they were hiring more tenure-track people instead of using adjuncts and lecturers, but as an undergrad it doesn't concern me as much. And it's better than letting grad students teach classes, as happens elsewhere.</p>