A disturbing trend: institutions have grown increasingly dependent on adjunct faculty over the last few decades, and scholars of color are ever present among this group

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, June 11, 2009 by Kenneth J. Cooper

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Dr. Ansley Abraham and Dr. Anthony DePass started their academic careers as part-time adjunct instructors, as many young scholars find they must.

Abraham was an adjunct for a little more than a year. "I got out of it because teaching wasn't where I wanted to go. I was more interested in research and policy," explains the sociologist, who has directed a program for minority doctoral scholars at the Southern Regional Education Board since 1993.

DePass started teaching at Long Island University-Brooklyn as an adjunct before completing his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology and moving to the tenure track. Since 2002, he has been assistant vice president for faculty research development at LIU-Brooklyn, while retaining his tenured appointment as an associate professor.

Unlike Abraham and DePass, many aspiring scholars get stuck in part-time jobs as faculty adjuncts, whose numbers have been proliferating as colleges and universities of every description cope with financial constraints. Other young scholars wind up in professional support positions, without responsibilities for instruction or research.

Several recent studies examining campus employment patterns over the last 10, 20 or 30 years show an increasing dependence on adjuncts and a large expansion of support staff, the latter driven by the need to comply with government regulations, provide information technology services and meet student demand for creature comforts on campus. Among the part-time instructors, the presence of scholars of color has been growing the fastest.

The growth of professional support personnel has siphoned off some minority scholars frustrated in their pursuit of tenure-track positions, particularly in the life sciences, says DePass, who chairs the minority affairs committee at his institution. A large number of minorities, particularly women, wind up in science-related support positions that do not involve teaching or conducting research and rarely lead to regular faculty positions, he explains.

Dr. James T. Minor, an assistant professor of higher education at Michigan State University, says the trends toward employing more adjuncts and support staff are less pronounced at historically Black colleges, where tenured faculty members typically are more focused on teaching than research. Historically Black colleges and universities have significantly higher percentages of Black faculty and offer more ethnically diverse compilations of faculty.

"The trends are similar and disturbing," says Minor, an expert on HBCUs. "I think they're very similar, but I don't think they're as pronounced, as a matter of scale."

Limited Opportunities

Analysts say other factors limiting opportunities for minority scholars to secure prized tenure-track positions include a large supply of doctorates in some fields, increased hiring standards and residual racial biases at major research institutions favoring candidates from similar schools--where minorities are underrepresented in doctoral programs.

The long-anticipated retirement of tenured members of the baby boom generation could loosen up teaching opportunities for scholars of color. But some observers harbor justifiable worries that those coveted positions could get subdivided into adjunct slots.

The number of part-time faculty more than tripled over a 30-year period ending in 2005, according to a study by the American Association of University Professors. Another study, released in April by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), found that the number of adjuncts more than doubled in the 20 years between 1987 and 2007. By that year, the cumulative increases resulted in nearly 60 percent of faculty being part-time adjuncts or graduate assistants, according to a separate report last month by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

"What does it mean to all of us if we are filling what had been full-time tenure-track positions with adjunct positions?" Abraham says. "I think you're going to lose some of the expertise. These are the faculty doing research, the base research."

Over the last few decades, the overall presence of minorities on faculties has increased, reaching about 15 percent in 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics has reported. The long-term gains, though, are not impressive.

Blacks, for instance, went from 4.3 percent of full-time faculty in 1980 to 5.5 percent in 2003. "That's almost a 25-year period there, and we've seen that tick up by about 1 percent," Abraham says.

For all minorities, the larger part of the hiring has come in the growing ranks of adjuncts. "An inordinate number are minorities," he notes.

From 1992 to 2003, the total number of part-time instructors rose by 41 percent, according to the NCES. For minorities, the increases were larger: 73 percent for Hispanics, 67 percent for Blacks and Asians, and a whopping 400 percent for American Indians.

Dr. Omar Cook is one of the African-Americans stuck on the adjunct track--for the last two years, in his case. Since receiving his doctorate from Claremont Graduate School in 2007, he has taught counseling and psychology courses as an adjunct at Azusa Pacific University and El Camino Community College in the Los Angeles area. This summer he adds a third adjunct position at California State University, Los Angeles.