Wouldn't You Really Rather Have a Professor?

May 13, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

I was grading exams yesterday and missed the Inside Higher Ed story on the continued adjunctification of our world. The data come from an AFT report.





Unfortunately, the report does not give data on the number of courses taught by each category of employee, just the numbers of people in each category. We don’t know whether all those grad students in research universities were teaching a course or two on their own or whether they were TAs doing a discussion section.

The trend is clear, though less so at research universities than at public colleges: the full-time, tenured or tenure-track professor is becoming the Buick of academia. You can still find them, but they’re gradually being replaced by non-union-made models that are easier to maneuver and far less costly to buy and maintain.