Less of Us

The following report was posted on Inside Higher Ed today.  The data now confirms what our eyes tell us: administration is growing and faculty is shrinking.  This at the same time that the student body is growing: certainly at OU, where our leaders not only would like to grow the number of students on our campuses, but are seducing departments into teaching a virtual (but real cash paying) student body online.  This also at the same time that we strive for national research prominence by feathering a new nest for, you guessed it, administrators in the form of a graduate college.  If we have more full-time faculty than average universities, because our remote status cuts us off from the usual pools of urban adjuncts, and thus a more favorable balance of full-time faculty to administrators, give it time.  We may still need associate provosts and deans to staff the Online College of Virtual Learning.

The Shrinking Professoriate

Every other year, data released by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics provide a snapshot of the growth of part-time positions in the professoriate. This year — an off-year for that data — the federal statistics provide evidence for another shift, in which the majority of full-time professional employees in higher education are in administrative rather than faculty jobs.
In the fall of 2004, 50.6 of professional full-time employees in higher education (excluding medical schools) were faculty members. In the fall of 2006, for which data were released Tuesday, 48.6 percent of professional, full-time jobs in higher education were held by faculty members.

Faculty jobs remain the majority among full-time positions at two-year colleges and in public higher education, but because there are far more full-time jobs at four-year institutions than at two-year institutions, the balance has tilted away from professorial positions. (Adding part-time positions would of course also swell the faculty ranks across sectors, but this data set focuses on full-time positions.)

Full-Time Professional Positions in Higher Education, Fall 2004 and Fall 2006

Category	2004 Faculty	2004 Administrators	2006 Faculty	2006 Administrators
Total	50.6%	49.4%	48.6%	51.4%
Public	53.1%	46.9%	51.1%	48.9%
Private nonprofit	45.6%	54.4%	44.0%	56.0%
Private for-profit	48.0%	52.0%	44.1%	55.9%
4-year colleges	47.3%	52.7%	45.5%	54.5%
2-year colleges	63.6%	36.4%	61.4%	38.6%