Study Uncovers Trend Toward More Part-time Faculty

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:99), the third in a series, presents the results of a 1998 survey conducted of institutions' policies and practices affecting faculty. Among the findings -- a large proportion, about two-fifths, of all faculty worked part time. During the five year period preceding the study, 40 percent of all institutions (all public and private not-for-profit Title IV participating, degree-granting institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia) took actions to reduce the size of the full-time faculty. Twenty-two percent of them did so by simply replacing full-time faculty with part-time faculty. Other measures included "increasing the faculty course load, increasing class size, reducing program offerings, and substituting on-campus courses taught by full-time faculty with remote site (e.g. video, audio, internet) courses." 



Different types of institutions relied on those reduction measures to varying degrees to effect the change. Overall, public research institutions were much more likely than private research institutions to employ each of these methods to reduce full-time faculty numbers. However, many (44 percent) private liberal arts institutions enacted at least one policy aimed at reducing the full-time faculty. 



Download the full report from the National Center for Education Statistics web site: http://nces.ed.gov/