[jseliger]

I've taught a bit at Arizona community colleges, which also rely heavily on part-time faculty. There are many more people with grad degrees than demand for them from universities, resulting in the obvious when supply exceeds demand: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc....

In the 1945 - 1975 period, demand for faculty exceeded supply: https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-l..., and many in or adjacent to academia yearn for a return to those days. But it's probably not happening.

The administrators and Boards who control budgets are also keenly cognizant of the fact that birthrates fell off a cliff in 2009 and haven't recovered since. Those of you who can add 18 to 2009 will know what's coming for an industry that depends heavily on 18 year olds for customers. Tenure is, in the absence of mandatory retirement ages, a 40+ year employment promise.

And one dark truth is that academia insiders with tenure accrue far more power over their adjunct colleagues than they do over their tenured colleagues. Academia insiders rarely emphasize this, for obvious reasons.

[the_jeremy]

> birthrates fell off a cliff in 2009

US births per thousand fell from 13.8 to 13.5 from 2008 to 2009, less than a 2% decrease. There wasn't a sudden cliff; US birth rates have decreased every year but 9 (1979-1988) from 1950 to 2019, going from 24 in 1950 to 12 today. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birt....

[kurthr]

Yeah, probably a bigger effect has been reduced foreign enrollment (COVID etc) over the last 3 years, however this will rebound. This is less true of applicants from China.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/06/23/fore...

That demand in turn affects positions filled/available at community colleges.

[thaumasiotes]

The birth rate seems less important to the universities than the raw number of births. Though as with the birth rate, nothing in particular happened in 2009: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195908/number-of-births-...

[twelvechairs]

US federal population projections don't foresee a big change in 18-24 year olds into the future [0]. Though generally there's a trend of a slight increase in foreign born populations over native born.

[0] see particularly table 2 https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/popproj/2017-su...

[lotsofpulp]

I would think even more important to universities should be the raw number of high schoolers and high schoolers’ parent that are questioning the ROI of universities, especially private universities.

[peanuty1]

The ROI of elite private universities like MIT, Harvard, and Stanford are still very high. The private universities that should be worried are the ones that don't have an elite reputation but still charge the same tuition (or higher tuition, if you account for financial aid) as the elite universities.

[bee_rider]

For the field as a whole I guess, the rate must matter, right? Like, if the birth rate increases, then a higher percentage of the population will be employed in teaching related jobs, because there are more kids per adult.

[xmddmx]

Background: the California Master Plan for Higher Eduction (1960) essentially set up a system of free college education to all residents.

It was slowly chipped away until "free" became "not free".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

The Adjunct job title makes sense in certain situations, but when a college system is relying on Adjuncts for the majority of credit hours taught, simply to save money, this becomes a problem.

[ta988]

It is not just about money it is about "flexibility" or else said, ability to kick people out to update curriculum and take younger ones more up to date with recent research.

[dhosek]

No, it’s totally about the money. You can get the classroom coverage of a TT faculty member for a tiny fraction of the cost if you use adjuncts.

[eigenman]

For reference, a typical adjunct (non tenure track instructor) will make $5000 per course per semester with no benefits. Tenured and tenure track faculty in STEM are typically paid around $60-120k per year with benefits and will teach, at most, six courses a year.

[robotresearcher]

The job of a tenured STEM faculty member is not the same as contract lecturer.

Tenured faculty do research and run the university as well as teach. At a major research school a STEM faculty member will often raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in outside research funds, which will pay upwards of ten graduate students and the other running costs of a research lab. They will do and publish new research, usually while training graduate students, review the work of others, run conferences, sit on hiring committees,, take turns being Director of this or that (ie. management positions).

Many STEM professors raise more external money than their salary costs. They are dollar positive to the school before they teach anything. And they teach too.

Yes, it has a salary better than contract teaching.

[klooney]

> Tenured faculty do research and run the university as well as teach

At community colleges?

[mjn]

It's a bit more than six courses a year at community colleges and teaching-oriented 4-year colleges (though you're still right that adjuncts are much cheaper). In California, most full-time faculty at community colleges have a 15 credit per semester teaching obligation, which works out to ten 3-credit courses a year. Some do get credit in lieu of a course for taking on other responsibilities (dept chair, director of a program, etc.), but that's the baseline workload. Even the Cal State system, which is made up of 4-year schools, has a baseline teaching load of eight classes a year ("4/4").

[beej71]

If it were just that, they'd hire full time contractors with benefits for one year terms.

[epicureanideal]

> But it's probably not happening.

I really wish they’d allocate Covid-like money to R&D or prizes for solving various challenges like curing diseases, which would drive universities. However first remove the bloated administration and DEI/Woke Discrimination Industry.

[xzel]

> I really wish they’d allocate Covid-like money to R&D or prizes for solving various challenges like curing diseases, which would drive universities.

They already do via DARPA, NIH and medical patents. Making a drug and selling it is the prize for solving a challenge like curing diseases.

[epicureanideal]

Let’s add a zero to that (as a string).

And add things like adversarial research to try to disprove findings, etc.

[s1artibartfast]

Start a GoFundMe

[robotresearcher]

Tenure does not disallow being let go for redundancy or financial reasons.

Full time permanent employees have more power than limited term contractors. Isn't that kinda normal in every workplace?