One might think that today's news that the Department of Education's new report on higher education staffing levels shows a decline in the numbers of part-time faculty would be seen as welcome news here at FACE Talk. Not really.  Why?  Because the numbers don't represent anything remotely like an indication that higher education is starting to shift back toward more full-time, stable faculty jobs and, of course, says nothing about the treatment or promotion of contingent faculty.

More likely, since the data comes from Fall 2008, a full year before the mess we are now in, the report represents the initial signs of things to come.  In the face of the first rumblings of economic downturn and tight budgets, we see institutions tightening their belts just a little and that is most easily done by letting go and/or hiring fewer contingent faculty members.  But that does not appear to be the case now that we are fully into the economic crisis.

We are now seeing a different trend and one that I fear is not only bad in the short term, but one that is going to have long term effects.  Colleges, particularly community colleges, are seeing massive enrollment growth as traditional students are joined by thousands of returning students.  Simultaneously state budgets are being slashed and tuition and fees going up (I know, this is not exactly breaking news, but stick with me).  The result is that the only faculty hiring that is going on (with little exception) is occurring where institutions can't get by with increased class size, workload increases, and ramping up distance education programs-and that growth is almost all underpaid, contingent labor.  Any chance that is going to change down the road?

We asked Sue Clery from JBL Associates, who works with this data routinely and helps us maintain the AFT Higher Ed Data Center, what she thought the report tells us and what the future looks like.

This report is interesting in that it relates both the continued erosion of tenure that we have reported in the 2009 American Academic, along with the decreasing share of higher education staff that are instructional yet again this year. 

What we at JBL Associates have been interested in recently is what is on the horizon in terms of an increased demand for higher education faculty.  President Obama's American Graduation Initiative outlines goals to increase the capacity and competitiveness of America's workforce.  The initiative has two parts-the first is to produce five million more degrees and certificates at the or below the two-year level over the next decade, and the second is to reach the goal of having 60 percent of students at the typical age of graduation of the age group achieve bachelor's degrees. 

Regardless of how we get there, it is a matter of fact that enrollments will need to increase to achieve these goals.  And, adding more students will require more faculty members in the classroom to ensure quality.  If we are to attain these goals, we will need many more faculty in addition to new faculty already required to sustain regular enrollment increases-both full- and part-time.  JBLA estimates indicate that, to sustain current student to faculty ratios, community colleges will need to increase the number of faculty by 36,000 to 42,000, and four-year institutions will need an additional 192,000 faculty members by 2020.

Anyone want to bet how many of those nearly quarter-million jobs will be full-time positions with any sense of job security?  Anyone want to show me the institutional or state or even federal plan for investing in a stable instructional workforce to help students succeed in reaching their goals, retrain the thousands of displaced workers to help pull us through the economic downturn, or restore our world standing in the area of higher education?  Anyone?

The point isn't to suggest that there is nothing to be done, but rather that we--that is, the stakeholders who know what is happening and what is at stake--must do more.  Why not start today by writing your Senators to tell them to include language about academic staffing in the current bill being worked on in Congress?  Then write a letter about it to your school or local newspaper. Then hold a hearing on your campus about academic staffing that involves more than just the usual suspects-include students and administrators and legislators.  Or perhaps some solidarity building to work on transforming the culture on campus first.  The point is we all need to be doing something and doing it now if we are ever going to see a report that has real, long-term good news.