I recently wrote a post blasting the idea of student-to-faculty ratios as a bogus measure of educational quality. It turns out that universities themselves don’t have a solid measure of what the ratios really are, or even keep track of the percentage of students taught by tenure-track professors–as opposed to adjunct, part-timers, or graduate students.
Yesterday Inside Higher Ed‘s Scott Jaschik reviewed a new book entitled Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education, which documents what we know and don’t know about the impact of adjuncts in higher education. The authors also explore the reasons for the growth of adjunct faculty at some of the country’s research institutions.
I won’t spend the time to repeat Jaschik’s review…give it a read. I plan to read the book.
Suffice it to say, however, that college administrators and boards of trustees have little idea about how much teaching is performed by non-tenure track faculty. Their policies–and enforcement of whatever policies may exist–are fuzzy at best, and these trends do have an impact on the educational experience of undergraduates.
[And if senior university administrators don’t have any idea about the impact of adjuncts at their own institution, you can jolly well bet that admissions counselors won’t know! If you ask, you’ll just get the party line based on goofy statistics that don’t mean a thing.]
One finding at the University of Michigan bears out what one of my readers commented about with regard to student-to-faculty ratios: often the non-tenure track faculty have much better teaching evaluations than the tenured faculty. Adjuncts are often better teachers. This fact does beg the question whether tenure is really a useful institution in the 21st century university.
We may also inquire as to whether the accepted wisdom that “good research informs teaching” holds any grain of truth. Research faculty obviously believe in this link. But to read undergraduate teaching evaluations, it appears that most students do not believe it–or at least to not experience the benefits of that research in the classroom.
What does all this mean for you as you seek the best college for you? First, treat student-to-faculty ratios with skepticism, and second, make sure you seek out the best teachers you can find once you are on campus–regardless of their job title.
Mark Montgomery
College Consultant
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