Supply side fantasies and precarious part-time academic labor

Abstract

Reliance upon part-time instructors within U. S. post-secondary institutions has received a great deal of attention, particularly as the percentage of such faculty has become the largest single category of faculty in academia. Understanding how part-time markets operate may allow better policy. Most current studies on the subject examine national markets, and emphasize demand factors motivating expansion of the part-time workforce. Although the subject of supply was once critical to discussions it has received less attention of late in part due to a faulty understanding of how part-time markets operate. Cross sectional regression analysis is performed to explore potential correlations between the number of graduating masters and doctoral students and reliance upon part-time faculty at neighboring institutions of higher education. Where previous researchers have found that institutions in more urbanized settings exhibit greater reliance upon part-time faculty, this analysis indicates that local availability of recently minted masters and PhD degrees within commuting distances of the hiring institution more closely fits staffing data. Policy actors may be able to use these results to better coordinate regional or local demand to supply, which has implications for unions and other policy actors attempting to limit reliance upon part-time faculty.

Tipologías en torno al profesorado universitario de tiempo parcial, ¿por qué son necesarias?

“…De igual forma, esto ha ido de la mano con las transformaciones de la universidad como una institución referente dentro de la sociedad, además de los cambios observados a partir de la masificación, diversificación y la implementación de nuevos modelos económicos (Jacoby y Boyette, 2020;Landrum, 2009;Liu y Zhang, 2013;Zitko y Schultz, 2020). En ese tenor, este personal recibe (ha recibido) atención dentro del escenario de la gestión institucional, de la políticas públicas e institucionales, y por supuesto, se ha consolidado como un objeto de estudio en el campo disciplinar de la sociología de la educación superior y demás disciplinas desde hace décadas (Clark, 1989;Tight, 2020).…”

The Social Creation of Temporary Academic Positions in Chile, Colombia, Germany and the USA

“…However, he did not reflect on the positions of different subgroups of academics. More recent works have considered the conditions of academics at the lowest seniority levels and concluded that working conditions in universities in Chile (Cantillana-Baranados & Portilla-Vasquez, 2019), Colombia, Germany (Graf et al, 2020;Keil, 2019), and the USA (Gaughan & Bozeman, 2019;Jacoby & Boyette, 2020;Stromquist, 2016) have deteriorated. However, these approaches concentrate on national cases and do not consider possible common trends across countries framed by theory.…”