Adam Smith tells us in The Wealth of Nations that specialization of labor is the key to a nation’s economic advance. One man performing all the steps for making nails, for instance, may produce several hundred per day, but a team of specialized laborers can produce many times more nails per person each day.
Smith attributed the modern world’s prosperity to such specialization, and economists largely still agree on this point.
A new trend in higher education seeks to put this principle to use. Universities are hiring nontenure-track teaching specialists, who differ from those on the track toward tenure in that they are not expected to conduct research but to concentrate solely on teaching. This approach can deliver admirable results.
Shelby Frost, one such teaching specialist, lectures on economics at Georgia State University and seems quite content with her role. “I was told when I was hired that the strategy was to put better teachers in the lower-level courses to increase our majors,” she said. Apparently, the strategy has worked: “When I first started, we had close to 100 or 150 majors,” and “now we have over 600.”
Joe Calhoun is another economics lecturer who likes the teaching specialist mode. His department at Florida State University has changed its way of teaching. Introductory classes used to be taught by a range of instructors, from full professors to grad students; now there are a smaller number of sections taught by more specialized teachers. “Students now receive better and more consistent instruction each semester for each course,” Calhoun says.
Furthermore, the division of labor appears to benefit research as well as instruction. According to Corey Johnson, a lecturer in the biology department at UNC-Chapel Hill, “teaching faculty play an important role in lessening the burden of research faculty”; they enable researchers to be more competitive with researchers at their peer institutions because they can spend less time teaching.
It is often assumed that nontenure-track faculty don’t teach as well as faculty who are also conducting research, but a recent study of non-tenure track instructors, which included teaching specialists such as Frost, Calhoun, and Johnson, found otherwise.
By examining the correlation between the type of instruction and student dropout rates, Audrey J. Jaeger, an associate professor N.C. State University, and M. Kevin Eagan of UCLA found that full-time non-tenure track lecturers do no harm to student retention. Among “doctoral extensive” schools (i.e., those that grant 50 doctorates per year in at least 15 disciplines, based on the Carnegie classification), the effect of this type of instruction was statistically insignificant, while at “doctoral intensive” schools, it actually improved student retention by 3 percent.
Still, not everyone is embracing the idea. In fact, some people are fed up with it. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, for instance, will be speaking at the ninth annual conference of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, to be held in Quebec this month. In between the advertised cocktail hour and dinner cruise on the St. Lawrence River, conference attendees will gather to discuss how they are “tired of being marginalized” and “dismayed by the working conditions and lack of academic freedom protections that come with being hired on a contingent status.” Conferees will discuss ways to improve their condition, including “developing solidarity,” pushing for recognition, and potentially unionizing.
In some fields, it is understandable why nontenure-track teachers would be less than satisfied. Leslie Mateer is a part-time lecturer in the humanities, an academic field where the labor market is not nearly as favorable for lecturers as it is in economics. Instead of having a team of assistants and a nice office as her husband does (he is a teaching specialist in the economics department at Penn State University), she has to grade papers herself and share an office.
Further, there is less prestige, less pay, and little job security for instructors like Mateer. In contrast to her husband’s multiyear contract, she is hired on a semester-by-semester basis.
Despite COCAL’s objections to the “corporatization of the university,” researchers and students cite the benefits of specialization, both in terms of improved instruction and lower tuition. Teaching specialists, at least in some fields, seem to make out fine, even though they must trade off some job security and other perks afforded to tenure-track faculty.
More empirical studies would be helpful to show whether an expansion of nontendured lecturer positions would be an effective way to stretch higher education dollars.
Duke Cheston is a reporter and writer for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh (popecenter.org).