Page 117 - Crisis in Higher Education

Understanding the Root Causes • 89

education a better value. As reported earlier, the problem is that the per-
cent of faculty who have tenure has dropped dramatically and now repre-
sents about 30% of all faculty at colleges and universities. 24
Tenured faculty have been replaced mostly by full-time contractual
employees, who can typically be dismissed at the end of a school year
and who may or may not have a PhD, and part-time contractual faculty,
who are hired for one course at a time and usually do not have a PhD.
Sometimes, they are professors of practice with substantial, relevant work
experience, but most often they are not. They can be hired to teach spe-
cialized courses in the junior or senior year or at the graduate level, but
most often they teach general education courses in the first two years of
an undergraduate degree. Some examples of these courses are English
composition, basic economics, the fundamentals of computer systems,
college algebra, and dozens more. Universities embrace contractual fac-
ulty because they tend to work cheaply, can be dismissed without cause,
and do not make waves. Typical concerns are their level of commitment
and their ability to teach effectively. Unfortunately, too often there are few
mechanisms to support the development of these faculty and only modest
efforts to evaluate their teaching ability prior to their selection and during
employment, other than student evaluations.
The primary duty of most nontenured faculty is to teach, so having very
good student evaluations is vital for receiving a new contract. Although
the teaching criteria for most universities are long and include many items
such as course development, innovative teaching techniques, service on
curriculum committees, and overseeing internships, the reality is that
contracts for these faculty members are based on how students evaluate
them. Often the evaluation is based on the single question about teaching
effectiveness mentioned earlier. A poor showing means that a new con-
tract may not be forthcoming. This gives students tremendous power over
the rigor of the course content in roughly 70% of the undergraduate cur-
ricula. Because so many of these faculty members teach required courses
in which students have little interest, they are likely to get low evaluations
unless they take actions that please the students. From the students’ per-
spective, they do not want to take this course, so they enter with a negative
attitude. It seems clear that there is pressure on faculty to soften the stan-
dards and cover less material. Those who do not may not get a new con-
tract. This is not intended to blame these faculty members because most
people, put in these circumstances, would respond similarly. The blame
belongs to universities that created this situation, first, by shifting hiring