Folks:
The posting below gives an overview of the history and changing environment
of higher education in North America. It is from Chapter 1: A Current
Perspective on Adjunct Teaching, in Success Strategies for Adjunct Faculty
by Richard E. Lyons, Faculty Development Associates. Copyright © 2004
Pearson Education, Inc. For related titles and support materials, visit
their online catalog at www.ablongman.com. Reprinted with permission. My
apologies for the length of this posting....
Higher Education's Changing Environment
Historically, North American colleges and universities have embraced the
traditions of the British and German models, including "academic freedom"
that has empowered professors to pursue their research interests freely, and
the tenure system that has protected instructors' ability to work long term
in what many have regarded as an ivory tower immune from external checks and
balances. They established high standards for admission that has focused on
applicants' standardized tests scores, high school class rankings, and other
"objective" predictors of student success. The integrity of their practices
was regularly confirmed through their own internal reviews, as well as
through assessments by their peers at other institutions through the
regional and discipline-specific accrediting bodies. While establishing a
culture of quality in the minds of internal stakeholders, many potentially
outstanding students came to perceive these practices as rigid and
exclusionary, and lacking the support resources to reduce their barriers to
admission, they did not try to pursue their educations immediately after
high school.
Beginning nearly a century ago with John Dewey (1916), an initially small
but courageous number of educators challenged the higher education community
to extend the full potential of a democratic system by serving a larger
share of those within our society. They lobbied extensively to change the
goal of admissions "gate-keeping" from one of exclusion to one of inclusion,
arguing that colleges should employ a wider range of admissions criteria
that did not penalize "late bloomers," those from working-class families, or
others who did not meet the "standard." The first community colleges, which
from their infancy largely served marginalized students, were an outgrowth
of their efforts. After the victorious close of World War II, military
veterans used the GI Bill to be the first from their families to kick open
college and university doors, and in the process, they established
themselves as role models for others who had been bypassed by higher
education, as well as for their own children. As the first wave of veterans
completed their degrees, they left college and university doors ajar for
those empowered through the civil rights movement-minorities, women pursuing
nontraditional careers, recent immigrants, and other-to stream through in
increasingly large numbers.
In recent years, the historical chasm between academia and our mainstream
society has eroded markedly. It is now commonplace for esteemed professors
to appear on television news shows to provide perspective in political
debates and to discuss other matters of concern to an increasingly informed
populace. In the process, they often promote their latest books, private
consulting practices, or latest research projects. Meanwhile, institutions
began to promote their sports teams widely to broaden support among the
general population and to attract upscale niche markets to on-campus
theatrical and musical productions. They also developed and promoted more
intellectually oriented activities such as professor-accompanied tours of
foreign countries and Elderhostel programs. Each of these initiatives was
undertaken, in part, as a strategy for increasing institutional prestige but
also to boost student enrollments and to mitigate declining public funding
for quality enhancement initiatives.
As a college degree has become widely valued as a ticket to upward mobility,
enrollments have increased significantly, and must of the mystique of the
ivory tower has evaporated. To meet the demand for courses by those fully
employed by day, an increasing number of colleges and universities have
expanded their course schedules into evenings and weekends-hours during
which many full-time faculty members do not prefer to teach. Although many
institutions have employed a small number of adjunct instructors through the
years, as well as some of their staff members (e.g., the college attorney),
to teach a few highly specialized courses per term, the expansion of course
offerings into nontraditional hours dramatically drove the increased
employment of part-time instructors. Because evening and weekend students
are largely part time, a common bond has developed between the "new"
students and their adjunct instructors that has fueled further growth in
part-time enrollments (Lyons, Kysilka, & Pawlas, 1999).
More recently, powerful external stakeholder groups, followed by proactive
citizens, have imposed a template of college-as-business-enterprise on
higher education. The increasing number of college presidents hired from
outside academia (Basinger, 2002), the growing number of closings and
mergers of less profitable institutions (Van Der Werf, 2002), and other
factors reinforce this paradigm. Although significant differences between
higher education and business enterprises (Birnbaum, 2000) will always
remain, this public perception parallels that imposed on other societal
institutions (e.g., health care, organized religion, and philanthropic
organizations), which historically seemed insulated from society. As with
other entities, the higher-education-as-business-enterprise paradigm invited
society's consumer mind-set into academia. Students, as well as their
parents and employers who reimbursed their tuitions, began to demand
increased value from their investments, and most institutions installed
student ratings of faculty and courses. Since student ratings have an
especially significant impact on adjunct instructors, they will be addressed
in greater detail in Chapter 13.
Once reserved for instructional decision makers, student ratings information
has become increasingly more widely disseminated, in both official and
unofficial print versions, and more recently online to increasingly
technology-savvy student-consumers. For a number of years, U.S. News and
World Report and other have published highly popular guides that rank
institutions and their faculty members initially resisted consumer-driven
incursions into their cultures, an increasing number now embrace such
comparative evaluations for their own benefit. One need not look far to see
U.S. News' ratings featured in institutions' print and online marketing
efforts, with the objective of differentiating their "product" from those of
others in the increasingly competitive higher education marketplace.
Over the past few years, for-profit institutions have begun to have a
dramatic effect on the delivery of higher education. Employing a "skimming"
strategy, they typically target the most lucrative market segment-the
increasing number of bright working professionals who are older than
traditional students and who are willing to juggle an array of
responsibilities as they pursue degrees in highly popular disciplines such
as business, technology, and health care. They more successful for-profit
institutions have developed "campuses" in suburban office parks, where they
offer classes, often in an accelerated format that students interested in
rapid achievement perceive as more convenient and manageable. Courses of the
for-profits are typically highly standardized and display few gaps or
overlaps in content from one course in each curriculum to the next-thus
reducing the instructor's preparation time and achieving other productivity
gains.
Classes at the for-profits are facilitated overwhelmingly by adjunct
professors, most employed full time in their areas of specialization, a
factor that most of their student-client view as an advantage over
traditional institutions. The for-profits typically invest heavily in
developing the instructional skills of their part-time instructors, unlike
many traditional institutions, which often play down their numbers of
adjunct faculty members, and have been very slow to invest in the
development of their teaching and classroom management skills. Students at
for-profits typically expect their courses to mirror the fields in which
they work or aspire to work more closely than courses at traditional
institutions do. Learning from instructors who were "on the firing line"
earlier in the day helps fulfill that expectation. Because of the high
regard in which they are held, ongoing professional development, and nature
of the students, many adjunct instructors have come to prefer the
environment of the for-profits to that of traditional institutions (Lyons,
McIntosh, & Kysilka, 2003).
The success of the highly competitive for-profits, especially measured by
student enrollment in the most popular degree programs, has been nothing
short of phenomenal (Borrego, 2001). Many traditional institutions have
benchmarked their marketing and course delivery strategies, including the
employment of highly qualified adjunct faculty. In addition more than 2,000
businesses-largely dissatisfied with the applicability of coursework
available to their employees, whose tuition reimbursement represents a
significant investment of company resources-have established corporate
universities (Meister, 2001). As the for-profits, corporate universities
rely on those most current with the best practices of business (adjunct
instructors) to deliver the majority of their courses.
As other products and services in the economy have become available 24/7,
demand for quality college instruction that can be delivered to time- and
place-bound students have also increased. Many institutions, led by the
for-profits, require faculty facilitators. One of the larger for-profits,
The University of Phoenix, employs 7,000 adjunct instructors to deliver its
online courses alone, and has expanded the number of students it served by
tenfold over the past five years (Olsen, 2002).
Prodded by their constituents armed with data on such wasteful practices as
high dropout rates in expensive programs and excessive credit hours
accumulated by students (Lovitts and Nelson, 2000), state legislators and
institutional boards of trustees are being increasingly asked to justify
tuition increases, to provide more effectively taught classes and more
comprehensive student supports services, and to improve articulation
practices between institutions (Ewell & Jones, 1994). The legislatures of
more than thirty states have implemented significant accountability
measures, including "performance-based budgeting," into their public higher
education systems (Schmidt, 2002). More recently, the Federal Department of
Education has begun demanding that colleges and universities whose students
draw federally supported financial aid retain and graduate students in a
more effective and timely fashion with the tacit message being that their
eligibility to continue awarding student financial aid hinges on their
improving their performance (Burd, 2002). Although varied in their
approaches, the measured mandated by state governments tend to focus on the
following objectives:
1. Increasing accessibility to higher education to all citizens who can
benefit from it, as a strategy for expanding the tax base and reducing the
costs of social services (Waller, et al., 2000)
2. Improving productivity by limiting students' accumulation of excessive
credit hours, through more effective advising and "seamless" articulation
between institutions and though improving student retention, graduation, and
placement rates (Selingo, 2001)
3. Dovetailing higher education funding and review processes with states
economic development objectives, especially workforce development (Schmidt
2001)
4. Deregulating public higher education by strengthening consumer
information bout factors of institutional performance (Wellman, 2001)
Among private colleges and universities, members of the boards of trustees,
especially those with business backgrounds, have become more active in their
institutions' decision making, with the objective of promoting standards of
accountability for their alumni, benefactors, parents, and other
stakeholders. Increasingly, private colleges and universities are
scrutinizing investments of institutional resources that were once
rubber-stamped. In their increasingly visible roles, trustees seek to
ensure the achievement of their institutions' widely communicated missions
and to reinforce their institutions' image among their especially demanding
stakeholders (Ehrenberg, 2000).
Lastly, the regional accrediting associations-the entities that confirm
overall institutional quality-have ratcheted up their role. With so much
riding on the results (e.g., students' ability to get financial aid to pay
rising tuition costs, students' ability to transfer credits earned to other
accredited institutions, and institutional prestige, among others),
accreditation processes are instituting an array of changes to foster
institutional effectiveness and accountability. These include a shift in
primary focus from "inputs" and "must statements" relative to educational
processes such as the academic preparation of professors, number of
resources in campus libraries, and so on toward a focus on student outcomes
and related indicators of quality within their specific missions. The
accrediting associations are thus playing perhaps the leading role in e
defining institutional effectiveness (Eaton, 2001) and are therefore
examining more closely than before institutions' policies toward employment
and development of their adjunct faculty members.
The widening circle of external stakeholders in higher education appear
fully committed to win out over traditionalists who seek to hold on to those
arcane practices that appear to benefit only those on the inside. In the
process, we are likely to see a reduction in the bifurcation between full-
and part-time faculty that has historically plagued many colleges and
universities and contributed to so much angst for part-timers (Gappa &
Leslie, 1993).
References
Burd, S. (2002). "Accountability or Meddling?" Chronicle of Higher
Education, 49, no.4 (September 20), pp. A23-25.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.
Eaton, J. (2001). "Regional Accreditation Reform." Change, 33, no.2, pp.
38-45.
Ehrenberg, R. G. (2000). "Private College Trustees Must Control Costs."
Chronicle of Higher Education, 47, no.5 (September 29), p. B14.
Ewell, P.T. & D.P. Jones (1994). "Pointing the Way: Indicators as Policy
Tools in Higher Education." In S.S. Ruppert, ed., Charting Higher Education
Accountability: A Sourcebook on State-Level Performance Indicators. Denver:
Education Commission of the States.
Gappa, J. & D. Leslie (!993). The Invisible Faculty. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Lovitts, B. & C. Nelson (2000). "The Hidden Crisis in Graduate Education:
Attrition from Ph.D. Programs." Academe, 86, no.6 (November/December), pp.
44-50.
Lyons, R., M. Kysilka, & G. Pawlas (1999), The Adjunct Professor's Guide to
Success: Surviving and Thriving in the College Classroom. Boston: Allyn &
Bacon.
Lyons, R., M. McIntosh, & M. Kysilka (2003). Teaching College in an Age of
Accountability. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Olsen, F. (2002). "Pheonix Rises." Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, no.10
(November 1), pp. A29-31.
Schmidt, P. (2002). "Most States Tie Aid to Performance, Despite Little
Proof that It Works." Chronicle of Higher Education, 48, no.24 (February
22), pp. A20-21.
Schmidt, P. (2001). "State Higher-Education Leaders What to See Improvements
in Job Training." Chronicle of Higher Education, online daily news (August
1).
Selingo, J. (2001). "Pennsylvania Rewards Fast Graduation, but Public
Colleges Cry Foul." Chronicle of Higher Education, online daily news (August
3), http://www.chronicle.com/daily/2001/08/2001080301n.htm.
Van der Werf, M. (2002). "Many Colleges will Close or Merge, Standard &
Poor's Predicts." Chronicle of Higher Education, 49, no.16, p. 34.
Waller, C., R. Coble, J. Scharer, and S. Giamportone (2000). Governance and
Coordination of Public Higher Education in All 50 States. Raleigh, NC:
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Wellman, J. (2001). "Assessing State Accountability Systems." Change, 33,
no.2, pp. 46-52
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