The Delphi Project in Inside Higher Ed: Protecting tenure

A Pullias Center report titled National Trends for Faculty Composition Over Time, which tracks the growing percentage of non-tenure-track faculty on college and university campuses, was recently featured in an op-ed by Richard A. Greenfield in Inside Higher Ed:

The number of tenured and tenure-track faculty members has steadily declined. A 2013 study by the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California found that, in 1969, 78 percent of faculty were tenured or tenure stream. By 2009, it was down to 34 percent. At the same time, there was a boom in higher education enrollment. In 1969, about eight million students were enrolled in in higher education; 20 years later, enrollment had soared to more than 20 million.

With more students and fewer tenured or tenure-track faculty members, colleges and universities have relied increasingly on adjuncts to do the work of teaching. At some institutions, contingent faculty members deliver as much as 70 percent of the instruction. Contingent faculty members, however, are not situated or compensated to provide needed student support or services, so a corresponding explosion in nonfaculty staff in higher education has occurred.

Read the full op-ed in Inside Higher Ed. National Trends for Faculty Composition Over Time is a publication of The Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success, a project of the Pullias Center that provides tools and resources to help create new faculty models and better support faculty off the tenure track to enhance higher education institutions. Pullias co-director Adrianna Kezar  is the lead researcher for The Delphi Project.