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New Research on Part-time Faculty
By Gwendolyn Bradley
A research report issued by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute in June examines what types of institutions employ the highest proportions of part-time faculty. The report uses data from the Fall Staff Survey of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, administered by an arm of the U.S. Education Department. The researchers calculate that 52.3 percent of faculty were employed in part-time positions in 2005–06, and suggest that higher education institutions that actively design and adopt contingent work arrangements do so to save on labor costs. They found that the institutions most likely to rely heavily on part-time faculty include those that have limited resource “slack” and depend more on tuition and fees revenue, pay high salaries to their full-time faculty members, are located in major urban areas, have small student enrollments, or enroll a large proportion of part-time students. Private institutions, on average, have higher levels of part-time faculty than do public ones.
The researchers describe part-time faculty as “peripheral academic workers” who hold “core positions.” Although those holding part-time positions constitute a substantial proportion of the faculty, their working conditions are markedly inferior to those of tenure-track faculty and are characterized by job instability; routine assignment to the least-desirable instructional tasks such as large classes, multiple sections of the same course, introductory or remedial courses, and classes at unfavorable working hours; poor compensation; and exclusion from matters of university business, doctoral committees, research grants, and travel support. The study does not address full-time nontenured faculty.
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