The Delphi Project — History

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The Delphi Project was initiated in 2012 to support a better understanding of factors that led to a majority of faculty being hired off the tenure track and the impact of these circumstances on teaching and learning, as well as to identify potential strategies for addressing issues of rising contingency together.
The American academic workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past several decades. Forty years ago, full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty were the norm. Today, non-tenure-track faculty make up more than two-thirds of the professoriate in non-profit postsecondary education — and these contingent faculty members often encounter working conditions that constrain their capacity to provide the highest quality instruction and educational experience for their students.

More than 30 key experts, representing a broad cross section of institutional sectors, unions, professional and disciplinary organizations, as well as other perspectives and interests from higher education, participated in the project’s original research in 2012 using a modified Delphi method approach, in which a group of experts is consulted and then brought together to develop solutions to complex national problems.

These participants completed surveys addressing key issues related to the changing composition of the professoriate, reliance on non-tenure-track faculty, and potential solutions –- all within the context of challenges facing higher education including declining state budgets, rapid changes within fields of study, changing student interests and demographics, and other issues that are attributed to the rise of non-tenure-track faculty. In May 2012, the participants convened to discuss alternative approaches, to question underlying assumptions, and to contribute to the creation of solutions to change the nature of the professoriate. The findings were disseminated as a policy report.

Since then, the Delphi Project has been guided by two meta-strategies developed by the original working group: creating a vision for new, future faculty models for improving student success, and building a broad base of stakeholder support for improving conditions facing non-tenure-track faculty. To that end the Delphi Project conducts original research on non-tenure-track faculty and produces important resources for use by leaders on campuses and among higher education organizations to create a better understanding of non-tenure-track faculty working conditions and the implications for student learning toward promoting change.

The Delphi Project continues to develop partnerships with a wide range of higher education organizations and institutions in our efforts to achieve these goals.