The number of part-time instructors at colleges and universities has nearly doubled since 1970, and the trend of hiring part-timers to save money “threatens the quality of higher education,” according to a report to be distributed Saturday at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association of America in Toronto.
Herbert Lindenberger, president of the association, said reversing the trend, in which part-timers made up 40 percent of faculty members last year, up from 22 percent in 1970, “must become a priority for policy-making on all levels.”
Some academicians cautioned that changing the system would be difficult.
In recent years, mounting financial pressure has driven colleges and universities to hire graduate students and part-time instructors to teach basic courses.
These temporary teachers are paid a fraction of the salaries of full-time faculty and commonly juggle several jobs to make a living.
One result of the hiring of part-time instructors is that many graduates who in better times might have been hired to teach introductory courses cannot find college or university teaching jobs.
The report, prepared by the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Professional Employment, also found that from 1990 to 1995, 55 percent of the 7,598 Ph.D.s who graduated in English and foreign language programs failed to find full-time tenure-track positions in the year they received their degrees.
The Modern Language Association, with 30,000 members in 100 countries, is the largest organization of college-level language and literature teachers.
The report makes several recommendations, including one that graduate programs warn prospective students about the state of the job market for Ph.D.s.
It also recommended that institutions with poor records of placing graduates reduce the number of students they admit.
Richard Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard University who has read the report, said it would be extremely difficult to reverse the part-timer trend.
“On the whole,” Chait said, “it would make sense to reduce the production of 38,000 doctorates every year, which is what we produce, since we can’t find jobs for them all.
“But of course, the counterargument is that graduate programs don’t make any guarantees to the students. People go in with their eyes open.”
