U. sees decrease in tenure, tenure-track professors

Between 1999 and 2007, there was a 2.5 percent decrease in faculty members holding tenure status and a 3.1 percent decrease in professors on the tenure track, according to the AFT data. This same period witnessed a 5.6 percent increase in “non-tenure track” instructors, who are usually graduate students or faculty in adjunct or contingent positions.

The AFT also reported that, during this period, institutions of higher education across the nation sustained a 4.3 percent decrease in tenured faculty but maintained a relatively stable percentage of faculty on the tenure track.

The DOE bases these statistics on information submitted by the University each year, but Dobkin said, “The data we maintain in our office give very different numbers than this report.”

Dobkin said that in 2007, Princeton actually had 7.8 percent more tenure-track faculty than the University did in 1999. Dobkin said the discrepancy with the AFT data results from the fact that the AFT/DOE percentages don’t reflect changes in pure numbers but rather changes in how tenured positions are distributed within the faculty population, a population that Dobkin said increased by 15 percent during the eight-year period.

Many of the non-tenure-track faculty are employed part-time, so percentages based on “a count of bodies and not full-time equivalents” are misleading, Dobkin explained.

Still, the AFT report indicates the possibility that “the fraction of our faculty head count on the tenure track has decreased,” Dobkin noted.

The fact that the writing program was introduced during these years and many of the instructors for the program are not on a tenure track might explain this trend, Dobkin said.

The AFT data indicate that Yale’s tenure changes are on par with those of Princeton. Between 1999 and 2007, Yale saw a 1.8 percent decrease in tenured professors and a 2.0 percent decrease in tenure track professors accompanied by a 3.9 percent increase in non-tenure-track posts. Harvard’s numbers are much more extreme. Harvard experienced a 21 percent decrease in tenured professors and an 8.7 percent decrease in tenure-track faculty, with a 29.8 percent increase in non-tenure-track faculty.

A Dec. 30 article in The New York Times built off the AFT/DOE data to link the nationwide decrease in tenured university positions to a decline that has been happening for nearly half a century. The article posits that the decline has been made more dramatic by the recession.

Filling positions with non-tenured, part-time faculty on a per-class or yearly basis saves money since these teachers receive fewer benefits and only make a third of what tenured ones do, the article reported.

John Curtis, the director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said he preferred the term “contingent faculty” to describe these teachers, saying that their employment is contingent upon enrollment or administrative decisions.

“They are in a very vulnerable position that really is a constraint on their academic freedom,” Curtis said. Contingent faculty have to avoid controversy and cannot easily challenge their students, because “if they get one negative student evaluation it could mean they wouldn’t be hired again,” he explained in an interview.

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The traditional argument against taking classes taught by graduate students or adjuncts is that they often can’t devote the same time and energy as full-time professors, Curtis said. “They have to scramble to put a class together here and there,” he explained, adding that students sometimes find it harder to contact them outside of class if they don’t have a permanent office. “[The] problem is not with the people but with the employment conditions.”