A survey the ADE conducted of a stratified sample of 123 English departments in four-year colleges and universities provided the following information about the makeup of the faculty and instructional staff in four-year English departments during the academic year 1996–97.

In the deployment of instructional staff across various parts of the undergraduate curriculum, doctorate-granting institutions differ strikingly from baccalaureate- and masters-granting institutions. Faculty members holding tenure and tenure-track appointments in baccalaureate- and master’s-granting institutions teach substantial percentages of first-year writing and introductory literature course sections. In doctorate-granting institutions such faculty members have a restricted teaching presence in introductory literature courses and almost no teaching presence in the first-year writing course. The absence of professorial-rank faculty members from the first-year writing course in doctorate-granting institutions marks a divide between them and other types of institutions and departments.

The distinctive staffing pattern of departments in doctorate-granting institutions follows partly from their responsibilities to staff graduate as well as undergraduate courses. But it also reflects the disparate, and much larger, scale first-year writing assumes in doctorate-granting institutions. On average, departments in doctorate-granting institutions that responded to the ADE survey were responsible for staffing 168 sections of first-year writing, and those 168 sections made up 42% of all undergraduate course sections these departments taught. The departments had an average of 38 faculty members holding professorial-rank in 1996–97. Departments in baccalaureate-granting institutions were responsible for staffing 31 sections of first-year writing, which represented 33% of all the undergraduate course sections these departments taught, and had an average of 11 professorial-rank faculty members.

The percentage of faculty members holding full- and part-time non-tenure-track appointments remains roughly the same across all types of institutions and departments, whether or not they have graduate students and whether or not they make use of graduate students as teaching assistants. Part-time and full-time adjunct faculty members are not temporary supplements for professorial-rank faculty members but are structurally required in addition to permanent faculty members for institutions to offer all the course sections they regularly need to offer in the undergraduate curriculum. Adjunct faculty members are crucial to the delivery of instruction and institutional functioning at every level.

The departments in doctorate-granting institutions responding to the ADE survey all make use of graduate student teaching assistants. In 1996–97, teaching assistants taught 36% of all undergraduate course sections in these departments—61% of the first-year writing sections, 30% of the lower-division literature sections, and 3% of the upper-division literature sections. Writing courses account for over 80% of graduate assistants’ teaching assignments: sections of first-year writing and other writing courses made up 71% and 11%, respectively, of the teaching they did. Their remaining assignments are for sections of lower-division literature (17%) and (rarely) an upper-division literature course (2%).

As the number of graduate student TAs increases, the share of the undergraduate curriculum taught by members of the professorial-rank faculty decreases. In PhD-granting departments with more than 50 TAs, professorial-rank faculty members taught only 31% of all undergraduate course sections in 1996–97, and TAs taught 47% of undergraduate course sections, almost all in first-year writing. Upper-level literature courses, over 80% of which are taught by professorial-rank faculty members, account for 17% of PhD-granting departments’ undergraduate course offerings. Sections of the first-year writing course, more than half of which are taught by graduate students, account for 26% of such departments’ undergraduate curricula.

These employment and staffing practices contribute to a circle of perverse incentives in the culture and work environment of contemporary higher education. As better-compensated tenure-track lines grow scarcer and more valuable, departments protect probationary faculty members from departmental and institutional service so that those faculty members can focus a greater share of effort on the specialized research and publication that, more and more, become crucial for positive tenure decisions. Graduate students competing for scarce tenure-track positions feel ever-stronger incentives to present and publish as many conference papers as possible, whether or not so early and single-minded a focus on publication is the best preparation for doing the actual work of a faculty member once a position is gained. At the same time, for a large and growing segment of recent PhDs, poorly paid part- and full-time adjunct positions serve as postdoctoral or bridge appointments while they search for tenure-track appointments. Evidence documenting recent trends in PhD production, PhD placement, and staffing of undergraduate courses indicates that the opportunity costs and sheer human waste associated with graduate education have increased dramatically since 1988 and are approaching an unacceptably high level that forbodes serious difficulties for higher education.

The institutionalization of a multitiered faculty sharply divided in its levels of compensation and security of employment, in its quality and conditions of work, and in its reward for teaching or research, contributes to a negative work environment in academic departments that threatens the communication of basic intellectual and academic values. Put at risk is the capacity of the academic profession to renew itself and pass on to the future the ideal of the scholar-teacher—the faculty member who, while pursuing new knowledge, takes active responsibility for the institution, the department, and all parts of the curriculum. The adjunct faculty, while growing markedly in size, continues to labor under contractual and compensation arrangements that are grossly inappropriate, especially considering the contribution its members make to the delivery of undergraduate instruction. The professorial-rank faculty, while its members are more adequately compensated and supported, has, in comparison to the size of the student body, shrunk to the point that its ability to perform its several service, teaching, and scholarly functions is compromised. Institutions’ increasing use of part-time and full-time adjunct appointments, particularly over the past decade, forms one piece in a pattern of systematic underinvestment in the human resource of the faculty.

Created by a coalition of representatives from eight disciplinary associations, the American Association of University Professors, and the Community College Humanities Association, the statement and action agenda articulate a set of shared understandings and commonly agreed-on starting points for future discussions and initiatives on issues of staffing in higher education.

• that all full-time doctoral students have full funding (ideally a combination of fellowships and teaching or research assistantships for at least five years, with fellowship support in the first and last years)
• that remuneration of graduate student employees should recognize the professional nature of the service they render and should, at a minimum, be sufficient to support study without the need for additional employment or loans
• that when teaching, graduate students should have primary responsibility for no more than one course each term and that teaching should never be so onerous as to interfere with the timely completion of the dissertation

• that graduate programs, to serve both their graduate students and the departments where they will one day become faculty members, should seek ways to give graduate students a broadened range of supervised teaching experiences, including deliberate and sustained attention to the teaching of literature as well as the teaching of writing.

The depressed salaries, per-course structure of compensation, and semester-by-semester contractual arrangements usual for these appointments reflect an assumption of impermanence that has long since become inappropriate. The contractual and compensation structures for part-time appointments should be changed to reflect the actual use institutions make of part-time faculty members to provide for ongoing instructional needs.

Even granting the continuing necessity of a corps of faculty members holding part-time appointments, the ADE staffing survey provides considerable evidence that departments of all sizes and types do not have sufficient numbers of professorial-rank faculty members to allow them to participate substantially in all the parts of the curriculum for which they have nominal responsibility. As a practical matter, every faculty member holding professorial rank generally cannot teach lower-division or writing courses every term. But the professorial faculty must be of sufficient size to permit a critical mass of the faculty to exercise direct responsibility for every part of the curriculum, including lower-division and writing courses.

The committee is convinced that intervening in the conversion of tenure-track appointments to adjunct appointments necessarily requires increased levels of direct involvement by professorial faculty members in lower-division teaching. Lower-division courses, and especially writing courses, are where the adjuncts are. Reclaiming tenure-track lines inescapably means reclaiming the lower-division sector of the curriculum as one where members of the professorial-rank faculty can, do, and must teach. The committee calls on all faculty members holding professorial rank to recommit themselves to teaching in all parts of the curriculum.

• Institute variable course loads depending on the research or teaching emphasis chosen by particular faculty members in particular teaching years. Variable course loads may contain incentives for faculty members to teach in first-year writing or in introductory literature courses.
• Reconsider the department’s limits on class sizes and its menu of small and large courses. For example, many PhD-granting departments have found that it usefully serves several ends simultaneously to have full-time tenured faculty members (often senior full professors) teach lower-level introductory courses in large lectures with discussion sections staffed by teaching assistants. Freshmen and sophomores have the opportunity to hear and meet a senior faculty member; teaching assistants are supervised and observed by the senior faculty member; teaching assistants learn the techniques of lecturing and the logistics of a large course as well as the approaches needed to make specialized knowledge comprehensible and to evaluate undergraduate students appropriately in such educational settings.
• Shrink the graduate program by reducing admissions and, in proportion, by reducing the number of seminars offered. As fewer graduate students are admitted, the faculty time and effort that are released can be reallocated to teaching in the undergraduate curriculum.

The ADE recognizes that these strategies will be variably applicable in different institutional settings.

Members of the ad hoc committee
Marcia Dalbey, Eastern Michigan University
David Laurence, ADE
Adalaide Morris, University of Iowa
Stephen Olsen, ADE
James Papp, ADE
Barry V. Qualls, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Philip Smith, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh (chair)
Eric Sundquist, Northwestern University

Copyright © Modern Language Association. All rights reserved. This page updated 04/30/99. Questions/comments to Steve Olsen, Manager and Editor, ADE Web Site.