Inside Higher Ed: Inexorable March to a Part-Time Faculty
New data from the U.S. Education Department confirm what faculty leaders increasingly bemoan: The full-time, tenure-track faculty member is becoming an endangered species in American higher education.
A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that of the 1,314,506 faculty members at colleges that award federal financial aid in fall 2005, 624,753, or 47.5 percent, were in part-time positions. That represents an increase in number and proportion from 2003, the last full survey of institutions, when 543,137 of the 1,173,556 professors (or 46.3 percent) at degree-granting institutions were part timers. (The statistics may not be directly comparable because the department reported part-time/full-time figures only for degree-granting institutions in 2003, and for all Title IV institutions in 2005.)
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