MLA Report on Faculty

Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English:

Significant changes in hiring practices at United States colleges and universities are causing a shift in the well-established balance among different types of faculty appointments. This past week [8-14 December 2008] the MLA released a report on the academic workforce that presents findings of extensive new research by an ad hoc committee of the ADE. The report, Education in the Balance, documents the emergence of a teaching faculty, made up largely of full- and part-time non-tenure-track instructors holding master's degrees, alongside the research faculty, made up of tenured and tenure-track teacher-scholars holding PhDs. Endorsed by the MLA Executive Council, the report includes new recommendations for appropriate staffing mixes in undergraduate sections at Carnegie Doctoral/Research, Master's, and Baccalaureate institutions. While colleges and universities have relied for decades on a faculty mix that has included full-time teachers, long-term part-time teachers, and teaching assistants, the accelerating trend toward covering large segments of the undergraduate curriculum by using non-tenure-track teachers instead of tenured and tenure-track professors is changing the character of the faculty and the educational experience of students.