November-December 2008

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Contingent Faculty and Student Outcomes

While part-time faculty are assets to their colleges, lack of institutional support may result in negative consequences for the students they teach.

By Audrey J. Jaeger

The movement toward accountability in higher education has increased the need to measure student outcomes. Policy makers, citizens, government officials, and other constituents want to know: what are students learning in college, and are undergraduates persisting and graduating? Administrators and faculty spend considerable time discussing service learning, learning communities, first-year-student programming, and other initiatives that may affect student outcomes. Yet these discussions rarely involve deliberation about who is actually teaching our students.

In 2003, part-time faculty appointments made up nearly half of the academic workforce, and nearly three in five of all new full-time faculty appointments were off the tenure track. The percentage of part-time faculty at community colleges is even greater, approaching an average of 70 percent. As higher education researchers Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein note in their 2006 book The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Career, part-time faculty made up just 27 percent of the total number of faculty in community colleges in 1969; that proportion increased to 52 percent by 1987. Despite this significant increase, we still do not fully understand the effects of part-time faculty on various student outcomes.We do know that institutions focus extensive resources on the first year of college, in part because the majority of students who leave do so during their first year. We also know that the likelihood of contact with part-time faculty is greatest during the first year of college.

Do departments consciously decide which courses should be taught by part-time faculty and which courses should be taught by full-time faculty? In dean-level discussions, is attention being given across departments to who is teaching what types of courses to first-year students? Do institutions of higher education look across colleges, departments, and programs and pay attention to who is teaching which courses? These questions need to be considered as educators develop initiatives that are focused on improving student learning and educational outcomes.

Faculty-Student Interaction

While it may provide greater economic efficiency, the increased use of part-time faculty in colleges and universities has also been strongly criticized. Jack Schuster has suggested that some part-time faculty are less accessible to students, bring less scholarly authority to their positions, and are less connected to the culture of the campus. In research addressing faculty engagement, professor and scholar Paul Umbach has focused on the relationship between faculty appointments and teaching effectiveness. He notes that contingent faculty have fewer interactions with students on both course- and noncourse- related issues.
 
The criticisms of increased employment of contingent faculty are based on research that supports the idea that faculty-student interaction leads to positive outcomes, including increased cognitive and affective development, improved academic performance, increased likelihood of persisting, and increased overall satisfaction with the college experience. Yet until recently we knew little about how the use of contingent faculty affects student outcomes.

Focus on Contingent Faculty

My colleagues and I have led a series of research projects examining the use of contingent faculty. In our research, the term “contingent faculty” represents a diverse set of faculty, including full-time tenure-ineligible faculty, graduate assistants, postdoctoral researchers, full-time administrators who may or may not have tenure, and part-time faculty. After controlling for background characteristics, we have sought to answer several questions:

  • What is the effect of contact with contingent faculty instruction on student persistence?
  •  What is the effect of exposure to contingent faculty instruction in introductory courses on student persistence into the second year?
  •  Does exposure to contingent faculty in community colleges negatively affect students’ likelihood of completing an associate’s degree?
  •  Does exposure to contingent faculty in community colleges negatively affect students’ likelihood of transferring to a four-year college or university?

Data were drawn from two unique state systems of higher education. One data set focused on first-year students at four-year institutions and drew from roughly thirty thousand admissions and transcript data files from between 2002 and 2005. The other data set drew from two cohorts of first-time, credit-seeking community college students in 2000 and 2001. The latter community college study tracked the college-going behavior of these students over five years. The initial sample of students included more than 1.5 million students in 107 community colleges.

Persistence as Student Outcome

In all of our research projects, we have taken into account the key independent variables that are discussed in most research addressing student outcomes and, in particular, student persistence. These variables include race, gender, SAT scores, high school grade-point average, state residency, demonstrated financial need, financial-aid awards (including the amount of money students receive through loans, grants, and work-study programs), major, first-year coursework, and academic performance.

In our research on four-year institutions in one state system in the Southeast, we found that contingent faculty taught more than one-third of the courses taken by students during their first year. Students who had between 76 and 100 percent of their first-year credits with contingent faculty were significantly less likely to persist than their counterparts with the least exposure (25 percent or less) to part-time instructors. This finding was consistent across all institutional types in the study.

We next examined data on “gatekeeper” courses. These courses typically present material that is required for success in future courses (in a major or general education) and are often prerequisites for particular majors. In her work with undergraduates, researcher Elaine Seymour noted that not succeeding in gatekeeper courses may prompt students, particularly those majoring in math, science, and engineering, to change majors, transfer to a new institution, or entirely drop out of higher education. In addition to the variables already mentioned, we gathered data on the number of gatekeeper credits students completed during their first year; students’ contact in introductory courses with graduate assistants, full-time tenure-ineligible faculty, and an “other” group consisting of postdoctoral researchers, administrators, and part-time faculty; average gatekeeper class size for individual students; and students’ cumulative grade-point averages through the end of their first year.

In each institutional type analyzed, the effect of exposure to other part-time faculty, such as postdoctoral researchers, adjunct professors, and part-time lecturers, was negative. At doctoral extensive and intensive institutions, students were about 20 percent less likely to persist into the second year for every percentage-point increase in exposure to other part-time faculty in gatekeeper courses. The effect at the master’s comprehensive institution was slightly stronger, as students were 37 percent less likely to be retained into the second year for every percentage-point increase in exposure to other part-time faculty in gatekeeper courses.

Because contingent faculty are typically hired only for classroom duties and may have other gainful employment, travel between multiple campuses, or be restricted by their appointment, they are generally less accessible and less available to students. At the same time, students report that the type of interaction most important to their education is contact with faculty outside the classroom. Thus, it is possible that the negative effects on student persistence of having gatekeeper classes taught by part-time faculty stem from the inability of students to meet or connect with these instructors outside the classroom. Moreover, according to research, students’ perceptions of faculty members’ availability and concern for them has significant effects on their persistence.

Degree Completion and Transfer

For our first study of community college students, which focused on degree completion, we reduced the sample to include those students whose initial aspirations as well as first-year course taking behavior demonstrated a serious intention to complete an associate’s degree. Even after reducing our analytic sample, we found that just 19 percent of students actually earned the degree. Such a low percentage of associate’s degree completers among a cohort of students who initially aspired to earn the degree underscores the importance of investigating factors that facilitate or impede successful completion of an associate’s degree.

On average, the students in our study spent approximately 48 percent of their credit hours with contingent faculty during their first year of enrollment. A 10 percent increase in the overall proportion of credits taken with contingent faculty reduces students’ likelihood of earning an associate’s degree by 1 percent. This effect may seem small; however, considering that the students in the study spent, on average, approximately half of their credit hours with contingent faculty, the average student became 5 percent less likely to graduate with an associate’s degree than he or she would have been without contingent faculty instruction. More than 7,800 (4.4 percent) of the students in the study took all of their academic credits with contingent faculty, which made them 10 percent less likely to earn an associate’s degree than their peers who had only full-time faculty instruction. In addition, part-time students were 15 percent less likely than their full-time peers to earn an associate’s degree. This finding is important because of the large percentage of students who attend community colleges on a part-time basis and the likelihood that part-time students have the greatest exposure to contingent faculty.

The second area we examined was students’ likelihood of transferring to a four-year institution. We limited the sample to those students whose academic behavior indicated intent to transfer and included only those students who had completed at least eight transferable credits at a single institution.

The findings indicated a significant and negative relationship between students’ likelihood of transfer and their exposure to contingent faculty instruction. Indeed, for every 10 percent increase in students’ exposure to contingent faculty instruction, students were almost 2 percent less likely to transfer. The average student in this sample had almost 40 percent of his or her academic credits with contingent faculty members, which translates into being about 8 percent less likely to transfer than a peer who had no exposure to contingent faculty members. Students who had all of their courses taught by contingent faculty were nearly 20 percent less likely to transfer.

Unintended Consequences

Contingent faculty members themselves are not to blame for the problems identified in this article; in fact, they are typically assets to their institutions. Schuster and Finkelstein note that contingent faculty may be more responsive than tenure-track faculty to the needs of diverse student populations, especially students who work full time and attend college part time. Some contingent faculty offer immediate benefits to institutions of higher education through their specialized training and flexibility.

Colleges and universities, however, rarely provide ample support for contingent faculty, who often lack office space, computer access, and technological support. Institutions should consider the support provided to contingent faculty at the same time that they attempt to understand how increased use of such faculty can have unintended consequences. And institutional leaders and policy makers should consider which students and what courses contingent faculty teach. Students would be better served if institutions would rely more heavily on full-time tenure-track and tenured faculty, who likely have a stronger presence on the campus and may be more available to students, to teach key introductory courses. 

Note

This material is based upon work supported by the Association for Center for Education Statistics, and the National Science Foundation under Association for Institutional Research Grant Numbers 519 and 07-213. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Association for Institutional Research, the Institute of Education Sciences and National Center for Education Statistics, or the National Science Foundation. This research is supported by the California Community College Collaborative (C4) at the University of California, Riverside.

Audrey J. Jaeger is associate professor of higher education at North Carolina State University. Her e-mail address is ajjaeger@gwced.ncsu.edu.

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