Today, the AFT releases American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce 1997-2007. The report documents the ongoing growth of contingent faculty in higher education and the continuing shift away from tenure-track positions. The data available from the most recent ten years show not only a continuation of these trends, but a significant expansion. For example, in community colleges, only 17 percent of the instructional workforce is tenured or on the tenure track, and the proportion of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members at public comprehensive universities dropped by nearly 13 percent during that ten-year period. 

"The faculty trends revealed in this report represent a staffing crisis that threatens the quality of our nation's colleges and universities," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "The truth is, disinvesting in faculty is unfair to contingent faculty, many of whom are miserably compensated. It also shortchanges students, who may have less access to a part-time professor who has to teach at several institutions to patch together a living."

The report , which is the first of an annual report that the AFT will be producing on the higher education workforce, provides more details on the instructional workforce as well as information on the non-instructional workforce in higher education.

Key findings from the report include: 

• The number of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members declined from approximately one-third of the instructional staff in 1997 to just over one-quarter in 2007.
• The increased reliance on contingent faculty and instructors is manifested in all sectors of higher education, although the mix varies by institutional type.
• Even if we focus just on full-time faculty positions, the trend toward hiring off the tenure track prevails.
• The number of noninstructional staff grew by 24 percent from 1997-2007, with the most significant growth in the category of professional staff, which increased by 50 percent.
• The number of administrators, the majority of whom were full time, also increased by a substantial percentage.

Read American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce 1997-2007 (pdf) and explore the national data or find out about the staffing levels at any institution in the country at AFT's Higher Education Data Center. 

Update:  Now you can read the full press release on American Academic.  Also check out today's stories about American Academic in Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education.   And check out the new ED BEAT blog over at Learning Matters who also picked up our new report.