Old, but not in the Way

Today’s Boston Globe has this article on older college professors “clogging the pipeline,” that is, preventing younger faculty with new perspectives and fresh ideas from being hired at the elite schools. This is an interesting explanation for the lack of job opportunities in the academy, but it’s only part of the picture.

Bostonist responds, speculating that this issue may have serious implications for the economic future of the state. If you take a look at how the lack of hiring effects the state colleges and universities, you get a starker glimpse of what’s to come.

The lack of new hires is a problem that extends to all colleges at all levels. I’ve confronted it at all the schools I’ve worked at, which run the gambit from prominent four-year universities, to smaller state colleges down to the vital and woefully under funded community colleges.

While it is true that the some of the older members of a given faculty can stay on past their allotted forty years, many more do retire. And these retirements create openings, right?

Wrong.

Consider this: When I was part-time, I taught at a state college where it was mandated, by the state, that for every four full-time faculty that retire, the college could hire one new faculty member. One. That leaves three full-time slots unfilled, three full-time course-loads broken up and divvied out among adjunct faculty who are paid less per course than the full-timers, and who receive no benefits.

So there are fewer full-time members in any given department to handle the bulk of the tedious but necessary committee work and academic governance. This has a direct effect on the growth of an institution and the quality of education the students receive. And this will have an effect on our state in the long run, given that most students who graduate from state institutions remain in state to work and raise families.

What kind of future are we looking at if our state colleges and universities are forced to do more with less?