Twice the Tuition for Half-Priced Professors?

Twice the Tuition for Half-Priced Professors?

By Jonathan Dally

You wouldn’t buy a brand new Mercedes if it came with a Hyundai engine, would you?  As a student it is in your best interest to look under the proverbial hood when investing in an institution for higher education.  Adrianna Kezar and Sean Gehrke explain in their article how non-tenure-track faculty account for nearly 70 percent of all faculty members and three out of four hires nationally are off the tenure track (2014).  While researching budgeting at the university level it is clear that faculty salaries are account for a significant chunk of the university’s total operating budget. In Chapter 4 of Larry Goldstein’s text, the most important resource for any academic institution is its faculty (2005).  Then why are Universities hiring more and more non-tenure-track faculty?   The obvious reasons include: budget shortfalls, last-minute increases in enrollments, and the inability to win approval for new tenure-track faculty positions (Kezar et. al 2014).  If universities are trending toward a larger population of non-tenure-track faculty, which are less costly, what then is the cause of tuition constantly increasing from year to year?  The American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.) Annual Report indicates that faculty salaries have outpaced inflation rates for the first time since the great recession.  An Inside Hire Ed article further explains that the cost for tuition inflations can be the result of decreases in state funding for public colleges and struggling endowment for private colleges (Flaherty, 2015).  Universities have to balance their faculty budget, which hovered around 31% nationally, in order to combat the loss in state funds (or suffering endowments).  This could be jeopardizing the integrity of the institution, a 2004 study indicated that have more non-tenure-tack faculty also have lower retention and graduation rates (2004).  This negligent budget cut could prove to threaten the mission and goals of the university.  There may not be an easy button for hiring the right professors at an institution, but there are benefits to increased accountability in the hiring process.  Not every non-tenured-track professor is to blame; in fact, a 2012 article claims that “the (tenured professors) are a bunch of overprotected people, who have got jobs for life, who are arrogant as hell, who try to push off the dirty teaching…to grad students or adjunct faculty who are paid low amounts.” (2012). 

REFERENCES:

Bach, J. (2012, October 16). Salaries Constitute 60 Percent of U Budget. Retrieved December 3, 2015.

Flaherty, C. (2015, April 13). Modest Gains in Faculty Pay. Retrieved December 2, 2015.

Goldstein, L., & Meisinger, R. (2005). Chapter 2: The Economic and Political Environment. In College & university budgeting: An introduction for faculty and academic administrators (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: NACUBO/National Association of College & University Business Officers.

Kezar, A., & Gehrke, S. (2014). Why Are We Hiring So Many Non-Tenure-Track Faculty? Liberal Education, 100(1). Retrieved December 3, 2015, from https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2014/winter/kezar

Schibik, T., & Harrington, C. (2004). Is There a Relationship between Part-Time Faculty Utilization and Student Learning Outcomes and Retention? Association for Institutional Research, 91, 2-6. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://airweb3.org/airpubs/91.pdf