Colleges across the United States in recent years have increasingly relied on adjuncts to teach classes, studies show. But Syracuse University is planning to hire 100 new tenure-track faculty members as part of a push to bolster its research capabilities.

The share of non-tenure track faculty at private four-year universities in the U.S. jumped from 52 to 60 percent from 2003 to 2013, Inside Higher Ed reported.

SU, though, has committed to hiring the 100 new faculty members as part of $100 million academic fundraising plan Invest Syracuse.

University officials will discuss this hiring plan with Chancellor Kent Syverud’s councils and college deans, but there have been no hires under the Invest Syracuse umbrella yet, SU Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly said Monday. SU aims to hire a total of 20 professors per year over the course of five years as part of the Invest Syracuse initiative, she said.

“The two prongs of Invest Syracuse really revolve around providing a world class experience to students … as well as advancing academic reputation, so faculty would be critical to that initiative,” Wheatly said.

At the national level, adjunct and part-time professors are generally paid less than their full-time counterparts, making $20,508 on average in 2016-17 — compared to full-time faculty members’ average annual salary of $80,095 during that same period of time, according to a report published by the American Association of University Professors.

Universities often use adjunct and part-time professors to teach the same classes a full-time professor would for a fraction of the cost, said Don Eron, a retired professor from the University of Colorado-Boulder and member of the American Association of University Professors’ academic freedom and tenure committee.

“You’d almost have to be irrational being a graduate student and coming up to an academic profession now, because the chances of getting a tenure-track job are slim to none,” Eron said.

Often, adjunct or part-time professors at SU are individuals with professional experience who do not want to take on a full-time position at the university, said LaVonda Reed, associate provost for faculty affairs and a professor of law in SU’s College of Law.

Those adjuncts with professional experience might have a private practice and want to teach at the university to share what they know, Reed said. Adjuncts are also hired based on their area of expertise or on a specific need basis for individual schools and colleges, Wheatly said.

Invest Syracuse calls on SU to better its academic research programs and reputation as a research university, Wheatly said.

“Typically, an adjunct would be hired in order to teach a special class or to teach a student special skills, but they wouldn’t necessarily be active in scholarship or research,” Wheatly said. “That is typically the purview of the tenure-track and the tenured faculty members.”

To meet Invest Syracuse’s $100 million goal, the university aims to fundraise $40 million, cut administrative spending by $30 million and raise $30 million through a tuition premium for first-year and transfer students at the start of the 2018-19 academic year.

The trend of universities hiring more adjunct professors started in the 1970s, said Caprice Lawless, an adjunct faculty member at Front Range Community College in Colorado.

Colleges will often rely on adjunct or part-time faculty for teaching at a low cost, Lawless said. She and her adjunct colleagues do not get the benefits of full-time professors, she said, such as offices or time for office hours. Many part-time professors have to balance several jobs to make ends meet, she said.

Published on January 24, 2018 at 10:31 pm

Contact Kennedy: krose100@syr.edu | @KennedyRose001