Contingent Faculty

Faculty Forum: Ways to Organize Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

Lecturers, adjuncts, instructors, postdocs, visiting professors, graduate student teachers, and others in non-tenure-track positions now constitute the great majority of faculty in US higher education. But many college and university policies were written decades ago and barely acknowledge the existence of faculty like me who work in contingent appointments.

Three Faculty Communities

Academic labor across institutional types.

Losing Our Faculties

The Fall of The Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and why it Matters. Benjamin Ginsberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Under New Management: Universities, Administrative Labor, and the Professional Turn. Randy Martin. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.

The Production of Living Knowledge: The Crisis of the University and the Transformation of Labor in Europe and North America. Gigi Roggero (trans. Enda Brophy). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.

Report Examines Working Conditions of Part-Time Faculty

In June, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, a group that includes the AAUP, released an initial report based on data from its wide-ranging survey of the working conditions of contingent faculty. Nearly thirty thousand people replied to the survey. The initial report focused on part-time faculty members, from whom ten thousand responses were received.

Resources on Contingent Positions

Numbers and Data

AAUP Interactive Data Tool

Data Snapshot: Tenure and Contingency in US Higher Education. March 2023.

Trends in the Academic Labor Force, 1975-2015 (.pdf) March 2017.

Snakes and Ladders

Degrees of Inequality: Culture, Class, and Gender in American Higher Education. Ann L. Mullen. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic. Professor X. New York: Viking, 2011.

Report Finds Inadequate Conditions for Contingent Faculty

A new report from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (of which the AAUP is a member) focuses on problems faced by contingent faculty and their students at the start of the academic term.

The Status of Part-Time Faculty

Statement offering new propositions, consistent with Association principles, to address some of the continuing problems concerning part-time faculty members.

Report on Contingent Faculty Participation in Governance Issued

The AAUP has issued the final version of The Inclusion in Governance of Faculty Members Holding Contingent Appointments. The report’s recommendations address the fact that the majority of faculty appointments are now off the tenure track, while faculty governance structures at many institutions have not evolved accordingly.

The full report will be available on the AAUP website at http://www.aaup.org/report/governance-inclusion.

What Do We Know about Teaching Online?

Headlines about online instruction change quickly. Six months ago, massive open online courses (MOOCs) were news. Now, the news is no longer about the wonders of technology or access—the focus instead is on the potentially negative effects of online working conditions.

What is it really like to teach online? What kind of professional life does an online faculty member lead? Does the art of teaching survive online delivery? Faculty working conditions, after all, are students’ learning conditions.

Pages

Subscribe to Contingent Faculty