The University of Colorado at Boulder had about 1,000 professors with tenure or on the tenure track 10 years ago, and it still has about 1,000.
But in the past decade, an extra 5,000 students have come to campus.
With that influx of students, there are now 29 students for every tenured or tenure-track professor. Ten years ago, there were only 23 students for every tenured or tenure-track professor.
It’s a trend happening at universities across the country, but Colorado’s universities have more students per professor than comparable universities nationwide. Higher-education leaders blame dwindling state support for forcing colleges to hire part-time instructors instead of full-time tenured professors, and they say it’s damaging the quality of education.
The tenure track is a six- or seven-year process that typically requires faculty to prove research and teaching skills.
CU-Boulder had to change its curriculum for communications majors – assign fewer papers and hold larger lecture classes – as the number of full-time faculty dropped, department chair Jerry Hauser said.
“If you have a class of 100 students, it becomes pretty difficult to assign serious writing assignments,” he said. “Large lecture classes produce an anonymous education experience.”
At Colorado State University, there are 27 students for every tenured and tenure-track professor, a slip from 21 in 1995.
And at Metropolitan State College of Denver, there is just one tenured or tenure-track professor for every 50 students, down from 35 students a decade ago.
Forty-nine percent of faculty at CU-Boulder have tenure or are on the tenure track, compared with an average of 66 percent at 28 other large research universities. The percentages are even lower at other CU campuses.
At CU-Denver, some departments have as low as 14 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty, in part because professors who retired haven’t been replaced, provost Mark Heckler said. The campus’ overall percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty is 33 percent, well below the 60 percent average of peer institutions, he said.
“That is the flag to us that we’ve reached the point now that we have to make investments in hiring tenure-track faculty,” Heckler said.
If CU-Denver doesn’t reverse the trend, some departments could have trouble during a 2010-11 accreditation, he said.
The American Association of University Professors has been concerned about the declining number of tenured faculty for at least 20 years, said research director John Curtis.
Colleges are relying more on part-time instructors because they are less expensive and more flexible, he said. And schools are hiring full-time faculty under contract for a few years instead of putting them on the tenure track.
Faculty on the tenure track are expected to do research that strengthens their field and to build relationships with students, while part-time professors who aren’t on the tenure track often teach at more than one institution or have a nonacademic job.
Students are the ones who lose when faculty are on campus only part time, Curtis said. They miss out on advice about course or career choices, and encouragement after class. Some students don’t have the same faculty member twice in their first two or even three years on campus, he said.
Nationally, the number of students per tenured and tenure- track faculty member has increased from 31 in 1975 to 41 in 2003, Curtis said. The data include all institutions from research universities to community colleges, which rely heavily on adjunct and part-time instructors.
Higher-education leaders across Colorado have vowed to boost their faculty with any extra money that flows into their budgets next year.
Metro State president Stephen Jordan plans to hire 60 new tenure-track faculty by next fall, though 20 of those hires will replace departing professors.
CU-Boulder chancellor Phil DiStefano wants to hire 100 tenure-track professors in the next three to five years.
“My overall concern is about the quality of our programs and the quality of the degree that we offer,” he said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
