Tenure in 2017: A Per Institution View

As advocacy to increase tenure-track academic career opportunities for PhD recipients and reverse institutions' abuse of an immiserated class of adjunct instructors has long deplored, the portion of the faculty with tenure or on the tenure track has declined to under a third of the academic workforce, while the segment with part-time appointments has emerged as by far the largest of faculty’s three segments (the tenured and tenure-track, the part-time non-tenure-track, and the full-time non-tenure-track). This working paper presents a per institution account of the number and percentage of tenured and tenure-track, part-time non-tenure-track, and full-time non-tenure-track faculty members teaching in each of the 4,279 two- and four-year degree-granting Title IV-participating colleges and universities covered in the 2017 Employees by Assigned Position component of the U. S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) survey series. The paper advances the proposition that variance between institutions is more telling than average as a quantitative indicator through which advocacy can gain purchase on problems that have beset the academic workforce and the academic career path