Understanding the Growth of Contingent Faculty

Abstract

This chapter presents demographic characteristics of contingent faculty across and within higher education sectors. The descriptive data provide insight into how each sector's hiring patterns have changed over the past 30 years. Results indicate that regardless of institutional type, the role of contingent faculty has increased and will likely continue to grow.

Mapping the Growth and Demographics of Managerial and Professional Staff in Higher Education

“…By contrast, Asian, White, and Nonresident alien staff are employed in higher proportions at doctoral universities and private non-profit institutions. These findings are consistent with past studies examining the demographic distribution of both tenure-track and contingent faculty ( Finkelstein et al, 2016;McNaughtan et al, 2018Smith et al, 2012. In addition to enrolling a more diverse student body (NCES, 2017b), it is evident that 2-year colleges and private for-profit institutions also employ a more diverse population of faculty and professional staff.…”

“…These findings are in contrast to the demographic composition of full-time faculty in which men comprise the majority, particularly at the senior ranks (NCES, 2017a;Smith, Tovar, & García, 2012). However, the gender distribution of managerial and professional staff is similar to that of contingent faculty: women represent the majority of nontenure-track faculty and outnumber men in the ranks of lecturer and instructor (McNaughtan et al, 2018;NCES, 2017a).…”

“…The number of managerial and professional staff in higher education has grown steadily over the past several decades (Desrochers & Kirshtein, 2014). This growth has coincided with a dramatic shift in the composition of faculty toward a predominately contingent workforce (Finkelstein, Conley, & Schuster, 2016;McNaughtan, García, & Nehls, 2018). As a result, professional staff hiring has far outpaced the hiring of tenure-track faculty since 2000 (Bennett, 2009;Desrochers & Wellman, 2011), and in some institutions, managerial and professional staff outnumber full-time faculty (Desrochers & Kirshtein, 2014).…”

“…Managerial and professional staff have grown in number and importance in recent decades, warranting a deeper examination of staffing patterns in higher education. Recent literature has documented the changing composition of the faculty workforce (e.g., McNaughtan et al, 2018), but researchers have yet to undertake a similar study of non-faculty professional staff. In this study, we provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the distribution and demographic composition of professional staff in higher education across the United States.…”

Fostering Democratic Participation at Community Colleges: Understanding the Relationship Between Voting and Student, Institutional, and Environmental Factors

“…For example, community college students tend to be commuters who live within the community but not necessarily on their campus, which may reduce the effectiveness of a campus-based program. Furthermore, community college faculty are more likely to be part-time or contingent (McNaughtan et al, 2017), which could also limit the exposure that even the faculty would have with these programs on community college campuses. We should also note that our ability to draw inferences about GOTV programs is limited as we know only how many programs an institution had but not the scope or nature of their activities on campus.…”