Inside Higher Ed: The Adjunctification of English
Without anyone paying much attention, professors have substantially been replaced by part timers and those off the tenure track when it comes to teaching English and writing to undergraduates.
That’s the theme of “Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English,” issued Wednesday by the Modern Language Association and its Association of Departments of English.
Among the report’s findings:
* Only 42 percent of all faculty members teaching English in four-year colleges and universities and only 24 percent in two-year colleges hold tenured or tenure-track positions.
* Part-time faculty members now make up 40 percent of the faculty teaching English in four-year institutions and 68 percent in two-year institutions. (Part timers are only a subset of those off the tenure track since, for several years now, an increasing share of the adjunct population works full time at a single institution.)
* Huge gaps exist in salaries between tenured and non-tenure track faculty members teaching English, although full-time adjuncts have seen salary growth in recent years. Per-course payments for part-time instructors have been relatively flat over the last eight years.
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