Additionally, a new report from the American Federation of Teachers found nearly “25 percent of adjunct faculty members rely on public assistance, and 40 percent struggle to cover basic household expenses.” The same report also found “nearly a third of the 3,000 adjuncts surveyed for the report earn less than $25,000 a year -- which put them below the federal poverty guideline for a family of four, while another third of respondents make less than $50,000.”42
It is thus ironic that adjunct professors – who are most up-to-date on matters of research and scholarship, as they are the ones most recently trained in the most up-to-date research or conducted such research – are the very individuals who are less able to focus on their craft or the students who would be recipients of such recent knowledge and practice (think particularly about the techniques of online pedagogical practice). But that is the reality of today’s practice: adjunct faculty are more affordable and used more often, but tenured faculty still holds a great deal of power. They also cost the institution a great deal of money, as oftentimes teaching well into their 70s at the higher end of the pay scale limits a college’s ability to recruit younger, equally talented individuals, at salaries more aligned with skills.
Through archaic rules, the faculty sets the stage for learning and academic programming. Should a cabinet member or members challenge academic programming by questioning the relevance of courses or point out the expense of offering courses with obviously declining attendance or relevance, questions which seem particularly relevant to establishing efficient operations, tenured faculty at a great many institutions can simply procure a vote of no confidence that would send the president packing. It’s why college presidents tread lightly around tenured faculty members.
An Additional Problem with Tenure
There is also the concern tenure – and the way in which tenure is determined – inhibits learning. As was previously noted, tenure was used to provide stability within institutions and across learning. But as we move into a society that educates a broader and more diverse population, questions are raised as to the relevance of information taught by those elite members who have survived the process to gain tenure.
A new study has found that, while prior research demonstrated insular faculty hiring practices within certain disciplines, it is now a practice found across fields. For example, the study found that “some 80 percent of faculty members with Ph.Ds. in the U.S. trained at just 20 percent of universities” – suggesting academia is “characterized by universally extreme inequality in faculty production.” Additionally, the study found that “professors who got their Ph.Ds. also correlated with faculty attrition: overall, researchers observed substantially higher rates of attrition among faculty members trained at those universities that already produce fewer faculty in the first place.”43
But in a world where most of the population receives a basic education, and where the Internet provides access to abundant information by which people can teach themselves, is it necessary to continue along such a traditional path of training? Yes, an Association of American Colleges and Universities (ACC&U) study has shown that “employers highly value learning outcomes like critical thinking and analysis, problem solving, teamwork, and communication through writing and speaking.”44 And yes, while these skills are valued, other studies indicated the importance and value of practical skills related to accounting, coding, algorithmic training, etc.
The question thus becomes: is the traditional model of higher education, tied as it is to tenure, still relevant today or might it be that such a model is killing creativity? It is certainly a question raised by Sir Ken Robinson (see accompanying video). Robinson, who passed a few years ago, argued that our traditional model
was really designed to make students like their
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