Center for Faculty Development

What Academic Leaders Should Do About Part-Time Faculty

Found in Scholarship and Professional Development > Leadership Development Resources

A contentious issue within the culture of higher education is due for burial -- namely, what should we do about the role of part-time faculty?

There are two positions:  One, reliance on adjunct faculty is said to be a financial and logistical fact of life that enables institutions to fund increasingly higher-cost programs.  Two, the increasing reliance on adjunct faculty is alleged to reduce the rigor of, and foster discontinuity within, instructional programs, while creating an underclass faculty challenged to fully participate in the institution's life.  The true issues, as is typical in such controversies, are more complex.

In the landmark work The Invisible Faculty, Judith Gappa and David Leslie reported their research on the practices and policies toward part-time instructors of a cross-section of diverse institutions.  They also formulated a typology of four categories of part-time faculty, predicated upon their lifestyles and motivation to teach.

1. Specialist, expert, or professional
   Gappa and Leslie found that over half of part-time instructors are employed full-time outside of academe, and can be best categorized as specialist, expert, or professional.  Their percentages are lowest among the faculties at liberal arts colleges and highest at private, doctoral-granting institutions.  These part-timers are typically pursuing new contacts, either social or professional, and the opportunity to fulfill themselves through sharing their expertise.

2. Career enders
   Career enders include not only those who are retired, but also the growing number of those who have cut back on their full-time work hours, and are moving to a more rewarding lifestyle.

3. Freelancers
   Freelancers include those who by choice combine two or more part-time jobs, artists and others who leverage their association with the college or university, as well as those who care for families.

4. Aspiring Academics
   This includes the freeway fliers and roads scholars of whom we have read so much.  This category does not, as many perceive, comprise the largest percentage of part-timers overall.  While the needs of aspiring academics should unquestionably be addressed by some institutions, the extent to which this group should drive institution-wide strategies is limited.

Gappa and Leslie further reported that most part-time instructors derive their principal satisfaction from the intrinsic rewards of teaching.  Are senior full-time faculty encouraged and rewarded for playing this role?  Many part-timers possess exciting work histories, specialized (sometimes exotic) education and training, and a passion for their chosen fields that provides richer perspective and builds meaningful connections in students' minds to the world outside.  When or institutions are promoting service learning and internships, is this background not a significant benefit for students and many institutions?  Part-timers enable many institutions to teach specialized courses, which are unlikely to generate demand sufficient to justify a full-time position.  Lastly, part-timers are generally willing to teach the evening and weekend courses that, while meeting the needs of increasingly schedule-challenged students, are not popular among full-time faculty members.

While research on the effectiveness of adjunct faculty is limited, two major studies indicate that there is no significant difference between the quality of instruction delivered by part-time and full-time faculty.  Summarizing, most part-timers pursue teaching for reasons other than to achieve a full-time faculty position, and offer significant benefits to students and our institutions.

In my work in this arena, I have been asked by the cost-conscious why increasingly sparse faculty development dollars should be invested in part-time faculty, who allegedly have no allegiance to the institution.  Such investments, this perspective continues, are therefore likely to pay dividends as much to other institutions as to their own.  They sometimes go on to say that to make much of an investment  of any sort in part-time faculty creates the expectation of additional future investments that will create a spiral of added costs that flies in the face of why they are employed in the first place.

Meanwhile, those whose arguments support quality consciousness, and who commonly support institutional "caps" on the percentage of courses taught by part-timers, ask "does an investment in the development of adjunct faculty not support an increased reliance on part-timers?  Does that not work to the detriment of full-time positions, which are already declining fast enough because of the large wave of faculty retirements and increased reliance on distance education?

An increasing number of us believe that institutions employing part-time faculty are ethically and professionally obligated to adopt prudent measures to promote their instructional success in our classrooms.  Do present institutional practices and procedures effectively reflect this obligation?  In general, I think not.  Not to adequately prepare these otherwise rich resources to deliver effective instruction, manage common classroom challenges, and evaluate student performance effectively denies our students the quality of education that they increasingly require.  Is failing to provide adequate preparation prior to the part-timer's initial teaching assignment and continued developmental opportunities throughout their employment not inconsistent with our core values?  This failure promotes poor interpersonal relations that lead to increased turnover of part-time faculty and its concomitant problems.

Having coached well over 100 part-time faculty, I am convinced that those who are trained to be effective from the outset of their teaching will generally:

• Prepare more for each class meeting

• Be more committed to the long-term success of their students and instructional programs in which they teach

• Achieve higher levels of attainment of institutional goals, e.g., retention, program completion, etc.

• Recruit additional students, e.g., employees of their full-time employers, who would have otherwise been difficult for the institution to attract

• Serve energetically as ambassadors between the institution actively supporting their classroom success and external resources, contributing to richer learning experiences for students, e.g., field trips, guest presenters, etc.

• Champion the institution's developmental efforts

The proper utilization of appropriately trained and supported part-time faculty enable our institutions to more effectively pursue the goal of reducing the barriers to those previously left out of the pursuit of a college education.  In the process, we create even richer "learning communities" than many could have ever imagined.

Richard Lyons is the senior consultant with Faculty Development Associates.  He can be reached through their website at <www.developfaculty.com>.

Source:  Academic Leader, Vol. 16, No. 11, Nov. 2000