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Part-Time Teaching and the OAH
Arnita A. Jones, OAH Executive Director One fine Sunday morning last April, as I entered yet another windowless hotel meeting room in Washington, I found myself wondering why I had agreed to attend the event. It was an all-day session, tacked on to the end of the annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a weekend gathering that had already provided enough news of downsizing in higher education, dissipating congressional support for federal cultural institutions, and complaints from the public about humanities programming. Convened by the American Historical Association in cooperation with ACLS, the meeting was meant to focus on the problem of part-time teaching, a timely_but not a new--topic of concern. I had expected to learn more about the problems of historians and other humanists trapped in a cycle of part-time employment, which offered no security or benefits and little opportunity to continue the research that might, just might, allow them to better their situation. I was prepared to hear that many part-time faculty in higher education were unable to provide much time outside of class either to students or preparation. These concerns are by now well known to any who make the effort to keep abreast of trends in higher education. They are--and they should be--troubling. What I heard that morning in Washington, however, was truly alarming. It related to statistics about the growth of part-time teaching, from 20 percent of all faculty in 1970 to 40 percent in 1993, a rate of growth so relentless and steep that it threatens to transform the nature of the higher education enterprise. Even more distressing were numbers presented by a representative of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), based on data collected by the U. S. Department of Education (based on a draft version of "Fall Staff in Postsecondary Institutions, 1993" National Education Statistics, April, 1996) These indicate that no more than 25 percent of higher education faculty are tenured, full-time professors! To arrive at this conclusion one has to make some judgments about what should be considered. The AAUP-reported data is based on a head count of all who teach, including part-time and graduate students, and those on tenure-track status (but not yet tenured). It includes all types of higher education institutions, from public four-year schools, where part-time instructors account for no more than 23.7 percent of faculty, to two-year colleges, where 64 percent of faculty are part-time. Recent studies also highlight another growing sector of higher education employment: full-time non-tenure track appointments which, according to a recent report on data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, expanded by 42 percent in the period 1981 to 1991. Those who follow the surveys of humanities doctorates published every two years by the National Research Council (NRC) may have difficulty reconciling the statistics reported above with data from those studies. According to the NRC's 1993 Profile report, only 9.8 percent of humanities Ph.D.s are employed part-time, not so worrisome when 28 percent of these report they are retired and another 25.8 percent say they do not wish full-time employment. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, women in the humanities found themselves teaching part-time at twice the rate of their male counterparts (15 percent of women versus 7.2 percent of men), a tendency magnified by new (1988-1992) humanities graduates (18.5 percent of women versus 9.2 percent of men). But it is important to remember that only two-thirds of humanities doctorates (67.3 percent) surveyed by the NRC are employed in four-year colleges and universities, with another 5.4 per cent in two-year colleges. Of the academically employed humanists, only 60.8 percent report having tenured positions. Another 17 percent are in tenure-track slots, but 22.3 percent report working in positions that neither provide nor promise tenure. Fully 34.9 percent of younger humanists (1988-93 graduates) found themselves in academic, but non-tenure-track positions. So its not just about part-time teaching, or addressing the very real needs of those part timers who feel they have been marginalized and exploited. Its also about the conditions of work of faculty who will teach most of the nation's students in the next century. Its about whether faculty will teach under working conditions that preceding generations have taken for granted: academic freedom underwritten by tenure, reasonable class sizes and teaching loads, release time for research, sabbaticals, retirement and health benefits, and, most important, a sense that their teaching and scholarship are at the center of higher education. We talked about all these things that Sunday morning in Washington last spring, and our conversations were well worth the time. A number of higher education organizations and professional associations then decided it was important to continue the conversation. We want to think through how short-term or short-sighted decisions made by departments, by colleges, and universities, conspire to erode the conditions of work for the entire teaching profession. We want to consider the impact on learning when students are taught by faculty working under such conditions. We want to find out if there are recommendations that a group such as OAH can make or steps that we can take that might ameliorate these trends. We would like to hear from our members--those who have found satisfying part-time work and those who have not. Higher education administrators and decision-makers may wish to share models of employment that address concerns about conditions under which part-time and contract teachers work, or explain the pressures that mitigate against such efforts. We will publish as many comments as possible in the next issue of the Newsletter and post all on our homepage on the Web, which can be accessed at www.oah.org. Let us hear from you. Please write to us at OAH Newsletter, 112 North Bryan Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47408. |
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