Most are the campus equivalent of migrant workers, with no stake at all in the schools for which they work. They earn about $1,500 a course with no benefits or pension. With such miserly pay, many of them hold several jobs at once, and spend the week rushing from one campus to the next. This leaves little time for faculty meetings, thoughtful readings of assignments or the one-on-one student contact that even middling colleges once took for granted. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently referred to migrants as invisible faculty who stand at the margins of campus life and disappear when the bell rings. Not many industries could flourish with such an atomized work force. Judging from recent complaints, colleges dominated by adjunct labor are colleges to avoid.
The part-time revolution was in some measure a response to the tenure system, which had grown cumbersome and expensive, particularly for institutions with small endowments and shrinking revenues. Tenure was created 50 years ago as a way of insuring academic freedom for scholars who traveled uncharted areas or held unpopular views. The promise of a job for life allowed universities to compensate for meager pay, while trumping more lucrative offers from the private sector. Still, many colleges scrutinized tenure candidates poorly before locking them into place. As money got tighter, some colleges found themselves over tenured and over budget, a predicament that worsened after Congress changed the mendatory retirement law.
Bennington College made headlines in 1994 when it abolished tenure and placed its faculty on contracts. A few mid-rank schools have tinkered with the mechanism, typically adding post-tenure review. But no major college or university has followed the Bennington example.The University of Minnesota tried and failed. Last year, the state was thrown into chaos when the University trustees tried to introduce a layoff provision and threatened to dismiss professors who did not maintain "cooperative" attitudes. The faculty threatened to unionize-unheard of at the most important state universities. The university's Board of Regents abandoned the plan, realizing it was driving away young talent.
Nationally, early retirement incentives have substantially lightened college payrolls. Even so, all but the first rank schools have replaced retirees with part timers. In the once enviable public systems of California and New York City, full-time faculty have dwindled as the adjunct ranks have grown. Diminished opportunity is driving men in particular from the field, leading to what researchers call the "feminization" of teaching.
But the part-time revolution has scarcely touched the elite schools, which argue that tenure is needed to attract the best candidates and to maintain institutional integrity. At Swarthmore College, consistently among the top colleges in the country, the Provost Jennie Keith says the cost is well worth it.
Outside of lab workers and substitutes for faculty on sabbatical, every faculty member of Swarthmore is on the tenure track. They are given four-year contracts which may or may not be renewed, and come up for tenure during the sixth year, by which time they have been thoroughly evaluated. "We expect our professors to do a great deal of intensive, one-on-one teaching," Ms. Keith said. "They advise students on research projects and are essentially on call around the clock. We ask a lot of them. It's only fair to give them something in return."
Tenure does not gurantee vibrant and resourceful teaching. But the "invisible faculty" system that is replacing it precludes the stability that makes the best teaching at least possible. Colleges need to find the midpoint between faculties that grow stale and stay in place no matter what and faculties of migrants dashing to and from their cars.
Society for a Return to Academic Standards
Last update: 7 September 1997
