Contra Costa Times: Ivory towers crumbling for tenured professors
Colleges and universities nationwide increasingly are replacing tenure-track faculty with temporary and part-time instructors, according to a study released today.
The report by the American Association of University Professors concludes that relying on adjunct professors and other nontenured faculty could harm the quality of higher education. Heavy teaching loads often prevent temporary professors from keeping up with developments in their field, researchers wrote.
“In addition to constraints on academic freedom, nontenure-track faculty are limited in their career progression while holding such appointments,” John Curtis and Monica Jacobe wrote.
The academic group found that the proportion of full-time tenured positions fell from 37 percent in 1975 to 24 percent in 2003. While the total number of faculty positions increased during that time, the number of full-time tenured professors fell by more than 2,000 between 1995 and 2003.
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