This is not the first Editorial from the New York Times on education. But it is the first that I have seen where The Editorial Board seems to be realizing that too many universities don’t see the “new college campus” as a place for education. I have posted here about most of the previous editorials. (I will add a category with links to those posts. The link to this one is http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/opinion/the-new-college-campus.html?ref=opinion .)
The Times relies on two studies to point out the rise of adjuncts and administrators on campus. They see this rise as evidence that there is a “new college campus”. That may well be true, but, as far as I can tell, the lack of concern for education, the marketing of universities to naive consumers and the unscrupulous meeting of the “wants” of those consumers is at least a quarter of a century old. Certianly Kerr and Riesmann saw it. (See Riesman, Kerr, Hutchins and Others on Higher Education )
Here are a couple more observations.
First, in my experience, the increase in adjuncts, from 20% of faculty in 1970 to 50% now, has occurred disproportionately at less seletive schools, where the salaries are also less. The data from one of the reports (http://democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/sites/democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/files/documents/1.24.14-AdjunctEforumReport.pdf ) that the Times relies on seems to substantiate this. I took that report’s distribution information of the type of college where adjuncts teach to do a quick back of the envelope calculation to reach my tentative conclusion.
But here is what I find most interesting about the edworkforce report. They write that “…a 2013 study of introductory courses at Northwestern University, however, found that students learned as much…from non-tenure-track professors than from tenure-track professors.” I have already commented on this blog about why I think any reliance on that report, especially without stating that the Pres. of Northwestern is a co-author, is inappropriate. (See Northwestern President Publishes Study About Northwestern And the National Bureau of Economic Research Publishes It? , Time’s Op-Ed Relies on Flawed “Landmark Study”(?), and “Comprehensive Analysis”? and Is The Atlantic Right to Report on a Report the Way it Did? )
Of course, I don’t mean to say that Northwestern’s adjuncts aren’t good. Most probably are. They are unlikely to hire a person like the one I describe in No Jobs for Ph.D’s? Depends on what you mean by Ph.D. That person will probably work at a far less selective school – a school that needs good adjuncts.
So, in conclusion, the Times is on the right track now. I am sure they will soon learn just how bad it is, and, just how long it has been that bad.
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