The Role of Part-time Faculty in the Quality of Instruction

Abstract

Some refer to the trend in higher education instruction as one that undermines academic excellence.(1) Others see it as way out of the financial squeeze on colleges and universities and as way to bring professional expertise into the classroom.(2)The debate centers on the effects of the growing number of part-time faculty on students and the effects of a system of benign neglect(3) on the part-time teachers. How do programs of journalism and mass communication fit into the picture? Historically, professionals taught specialized courses, particularly introductory editing and reporting classes. Although the number of news-editorial majors is in decline, adjuncts now also teach in growth areas, such as graphics, public relations and advertising.Is the use of adjuncts in journalism education prompted primarily by the need for special expertise or motivated by the desire to cover more classes for less money, as some say is the case in higher education?' Part-time teachers now fill positions vacated by full-time faculty or step into slots created especially for adjuncts in many disciplines at both four-year and junior colleges, partly in response to tougher economic times.(5)Estimates of adjunct use throughout all of higher education range from 38 percent(6) to 57 percent(7). In community colleges they account for 67 percent of all faculty.(8) Even before the most recent financial crisis in higher education, researchers who looked at the use of adjuncts in community colleges found that two new part-time positions were created for every new full-time position in an eight-year period.(9)Women and minorities make up the majority of the ranks of this growing army of adjuncts in all institutions.(10) Because the part-time pool is large, many institutions enjoy buyer's market in which they can pay low wages and offer few, if any, other benefits.(11)The result is sizeable portion of faculty in higher education who teach many of the required classes but have only tangential connections to the institution. Left unanswered are questions about what, if anything, schools are doing to orient these teachers to teaching and whether adjuncts' classroom performance is monitored and evaluated.While most research has focused on the growth of part-time teachers in higher education overall, few writers have discussed management of part-time teachers in communication and English units and in community colleges.(12)A literature search in journalism and mass communication turned up one study of adjuncts. It showed journalism adjuncts at three schools teach an average of 35.6 percent of students in skills classes and award As and Bs to more than two-thirds, rate higher than that of full-time faculty.(13)The purpose of this present study was three-fold. The first goal was to document on larger scale how and to what extent part-time faculty are being used to teach in college and university units with groups of courses labeled journalism and mass communication. The second goal was to look at hiring, orientation, supervision and evaluation practices and to compare accredited with non-accredited units. Researchers asked this question: Would the existence of accreditation guidelines make difference in the use and supervision of part-time faculty? The third objective was to obtain suggestions from administrators on ways to improve the use of such guidelines to benefit both students and adjuncts.MethodResearchers mailed 382 questionnaires to administrators at schools, departments and programs of journalism from 1989 list provided by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.(14) The first mailing went out in January 1990 followed by second in March. A total of 232 questionnaires were returned; however, only 214 proved usable for final response rate of 56 percent.The questionnaire was necessarily broad in an effort to document how and to what extent part-time faculty are being used in journalism and mass communication. …