A recurring theme in my postings has been how societal and demographic changes around the country are prompting colleges and universities around the country to keep up and evolve themselves, most notably in terms of trying to more accurately reflect the growing racial/ethnic diversity of students in their faculty ranks. But as the New York Times reports, one change that colleges have been making -- using more non-tenure track part-time faculty -- has many people upset, including other colleges, to the point where some colleges are reassessing their hiring tactics:

Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on the country’s campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled, according to federal figures analyzed by the American Association of University Professors. . . .

It has become so extreme, however, that some universities are pulling back, concerned about the effect on educational quality. Rutgers University agreed in a labor settlement in August to add 100 tenure or tenure-track positions. Across the country, faculty unions are organizing part-timers. And the American Federation of Teachers is pushing legislation in 11 states to mandate that 75 percent of classes be taught by tenured or tenure-track teachers.

Three decades ago, adjuncts — both part-timers and full-timers not on a tenure track — represented only 43 percent of professors . . . Currently, they account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and universities, both public and private.

John W. Curtis, the union’s director of research and public policy, said that while the number of tenured and tenure-track professors has increased by about 25 percent over the past 30 years, they have been swamped by the growth in adjunct faculty. Over all, the number of people teaching at colleges and universities has doubled since 1975. . . .

Adjuncts are less likely to have doctoral degrees, educators say. They also have less time to meet with students, and research suggests that students who take many courses with them are somewhat less likely to graduate. . . . Several studies of individual universities have determined that freshmen taught by many part-timers were more likely to drop out.

The article notes that the argument many public colleges make to defend their increased use of adjunct faculty is that since they receive less money each year from their state governments, they have less money to hire traditional tenure-track faculty and therefore need to make up the difference by hiring less expensive faculty that also give them more budgetary flexibility.

But as the article also points out, as the proportion of faculty who are tenured or tenure-track continues to decline, so too might the quality of education that their students receive. In that context however, it’s important to note that the declining quality of education is not due to adjunct faculty being inherently less qualified teachers. Instead, it’s generally due to the fact that adjunct faculty have to teach more classes and are much more pressed for time.

Either way, it is encouraging to see that some colleges are beginning to notice that their efforts to hire more adjunct faculty has its limits and that for the good of the entire college, it’s better to increase, rather than cut, their number of tenure-track faculty.