AS college enrollment grows, a rising share of English courses at US colleges are being taught by full-time, non-tenure-track lecturers who generally lack doctorates, according to a report released by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and its Association of Departments of English, The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported.
The report, “Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English,” is based mainly on US Department of Education data, a 1999 staffing survey by the MLA, and the data collected from 135 colleges’ English departments. It found that the share of faculty members who are full time and non-tenure-track rose from 12.9 percent in 1999 to 16.8 percent in 2007. Such faculty members, most of whom are hired on multi-year contracts, “have become an increasingly crucial component of English department staffing.”
While over 90 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty members teaching English in four-year institutions hold a doctorate, only 25 percent of non-tenure-track faculty members do. This educational gap could be troubling, the report says, because although most non-tenure-track faculty members are assigned to lower-division courses, they also teach a significant share of the upper-division courses offered to undergraduates.
Rosemary G. Feal, the executive director of the MLA, said the impetus for the report was a sense that English departments were no longer in balance. “We think what is unique about American higher education is being compromised,” said Feal. Students may have fewer chances to be mentored or get to know faculty members who can write references for graduate and professional schools. Fewer faculty members may be available to guide undergraduate research.
The report recommends increasing the portion of tenured and tenure-track faculty members so that they teach at least 45 percent of undergraduate course sections in doctorate-granting institutions, 55 percent in master’s institutions and 70 percent in baccalaureate schools.
