An investigation of non-tenure-track faculty at ten elite research universities and the implications for undergraduate education, institutional governance, and American preeminence in higher education. Much attention has been paid to the increasing proportion of non-tenure-track faculty—adjuncts, lecturers, and others—in American higher education. Critics charge that universities exploit “contingent faculty” and graduate students, engaging in a type of bait and switch to attract applicants (advertising institutional standing based on distinguished faculty who seldom teach undergraduates), and as a result provide undergraduates with an inadequate educational experience. This book, by two experienced academic administrators, investigates the expanding role of part-time and non-tenure-track instructors in ten elite research universities and the consequences of this trend for the quality of the educational experience, the functioning of the university, and the excellence of the academic environment. The authors discover, to their surprise, that the existing data on the workforce in higher education is ambiguous (different institutions use different terms for non-tenure track instructors; some even omit them from faculty data reports), making comparisons suspect. Many academic administrators are unaware of the tenured/nontenured breakdown of their own faculties and the hiring practices of their own universities. The authors look closely at the teaching workforce at Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Washington, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Northwestern, and Washington University, believing that these outstanding universities provide a strong test case of resistance to pressures on the traditional tenure system. They describe hiring trends and what drives them, explain why they matter if we want to improve undergraduate education, support collegiality on campus, trust in academic governance, prevent the erosion of tenure, and preserve America's global leadership in higher education.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

In the Jim Crow South, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and, later, Vietnamese and Indian Americans faced obstacles similar to those experienced by African Americans in their fight for civil and human rights. Although they were not black, Asian Americans generally were not considered white and thus were subject to school segregation, antimiscegenation laws, and discriminatory business practices. As Asian Americans attempted to establish themselves in the South, they found that institutionalized racism thwarted their efforts time and again. However, this book tells the story of their resistance and documents how Asian American political actors and civil rights activists challenged existing definitions of rights and justice in the South. From the formation of Chinese and Japanese communities in the early twentieth century through Indian hotel owners' battles against business discrimination in the 1980s and '90s, Stephanie Hinnershitz shows how Asian Americans organized carefully constructed legal battles that often traveled to the state and federal supreme courts. Drawing from legislative and legal records as well as oral histories, memoirs, and newspapers, Hinnershitz describes a movement that ran alongside and at times intersected with the African American fight for justice, and she restores Asian Americans to the fraught legacy of civil rights in the South.

Addresses the experiences of those in the non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) trenches through storytelling and reflection. By connecting NTTF voices from various aspects of writing studies, offers fresh perspectives and meaningful contributions, imagining the possibilities for contingent faculty to be valued and honored in educational systems that often do the opposite.

This book presents real cases where new policies and practices have been implemented, unveiling the mechanisms required to create change, the challenges and opportunities that implementers face, and how effective methodology depends on context.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

This book focuses on the status and work of full-time non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) whose ranks are increasing as tenure track faculty (TTF) make up a smaller percentage of the professoriate. NTTF experience highly uneven and conditional access to collegiality, are often excluded from decision-making spaces, and receive limited respect from their TTF colleagues because of outdated notions that link perceived expertise almost exclusively to scholarship. The result is often a sub-class of faculty marginalized in their departments, which reduces the inclusion of diverse voices in academic governance, professional relationships, and student learning. Given these implications, the authors ask, how can departments, institutions, and the profession do more to engage NTTF as full and active colleagues? The limited access of NTTF to the rights and responsibilities of collegiality harms institutional success in several ways. Given the full-time nature of their work and the heavy (but not exclusive) focus on instruction, NTTF are likely to be on campus as much or more than TTF, and thus be engaged with students, colleagues, and administrators in ways that more closely resemble TTF than part-time faculty. Their limited access to collegial spaces makes it harder for them to do their jobs by restricting access to information and input into decision-making. Moreover, since the greatest growth among women faculty and faculty of color is in NTTF roles, their exclusion from collegiality and decision-making negates the very diversity the profession claims to seek. Finally, colleges and universities face financial, curricular, and organizational challenges which require broad input, although the burden of governance is falling on fewer shoulders as the percentage of TTF declines and NTTF are excluded from these spaces.Ultimately, NTTF must be engaged as partners and colleagues in supporting institutional health. This book – the fruit of extensive data collection at two institutions over a five-year period – describes lessons learned from and benefits experienced by departments that have successfully supported and engaged NTTF as colleagues. Drawing on their research data and analysis of “healthy” departments that integrate NTTF, the authors identify the practices, policies, and approaches that support NTTF inclusion, shape a more positive workplace environment, improve morale, satisfaction, and commitment, and fully leverage the expertise of NTTF and the valuable human capital they represent. The authors argue that this more inclusive collegiality improves governance, supports institutional success, and serves diverse institutional missions. Though primarily addressed to institutional leaders, department chairs, tenure-line faculty, and leaders in the academic profession, it is hoped that the findings will be useful to NTTF who are engaged as advocates for and partners in the change process required to address the evolving structure of the university faculty.