What can we tell about schools that have tones of open part-time positions

[fishbrains]

It's entirely normal to advertise like this to create a "pool" of potential instructors. 
There is zero correlation between having these postings, the actual need for instructors, or the potential for a permanent full-time position.

Yes, and if you've ever had about five or six classes to staff, and no one left on the list to call, and all your full-timers maxed-out on overloads, all on the day before classes started, you would start doing this pretty quickly too.

Not defending. Just saying . . .

[hamburger]

but no full time position?

Hi, there are some local schools including my former CC that advertise for open positions. However, they are all part-time or contracted course-based positions. These positions do not include benefits nor allow one to join the union. Yet, the job descriptions look like jobs for full-time faculty. Does that mean they are just abusing the situation to hire people whom they can get rid of whenever they like?

For my former department, they again advertised for over 10 open positions. Yet, they are all part-time. Seems like they need people but they don't want to pay for any benefit nor want to hire full-timers. When a new department head came, we thought the situation would improve but it is worse.

If these are sincere questions, then you really should apply for other jobs, just to see what's happening outside of the ivory tower.

It's not a problem confined to your local schools. It's a fundamental shift in employment and labor relations in almost all sectors that has been going on around us for decades.

I have tried other places such as hardware stores, IKEA, and others but no interview at all.

For Magicians, knowing some techniques that others don't know make them special. Imagine that all of a sudden, a few well established senior magicians decided to betray the profession by revealing all the secrets and developing easy-to-use tools to make anybody who are not in the field easy to become a magician. Instead of spending months and years to develop new skills, now anybody can call himself a magician and applies for jobs. If they don't know something, they can just go online to search for information or just ask on the forums to get the answers. HR is flooded by hundreds and thousands of applicants who claim to be a magician. Some hiring managers just want to hire somebody who could just get the job done. They don't care if that person went to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn the magic or just learned how to do some basic tricks from Youtube or online schools. Since these newcomers are not really professional magicians, they are willing to take the job at lower salary and get employed. Now, those real magicians are no longer special and lost their jobs to these newcomers.

[Mobius]

Those new magicians might be just as qualified, and have a more positive attitude about the institution and the students they teach.

[Ruralguy]

Its unfortunate, but kind of the way of the world. Everything involving computers and related hardware and software has gotten easier to learn. If people can then sell their wares a discount, then they will. 

[the_geneticist]

Look, your skill set is no longer special.  It happens.  There are "learn computer programing" games for kids too young to read.  Times have changed, but you have not.  Time to grow and expand.

My great-uncle used to work at a factory that produced glass bottles.  His job was to carefully remove racks of bottles from an oven.  He was very good at it - meaning he didn't drop the product and he didn't get horribly burned (both very real risks).  One day he got to tour another factory.  They had automated the process of moving bottles and replaced his job with a machine.  He knew then that he needed to learn new skills and find a different position.  He eventually had a career as the manager of a car dealership.

Also, the call-back for an interview rate is really, really low outside of academia.  Apply for 50 jobs and you might hear back from one.  If you want a new job, then your job is to apply for jobs.

[polly_mer]

For one thing, most openings aren't for magicians.  Instead, we want diligent people who will use standard packages in standard ways to get useful results in a timely manner.

Selling yourself as a magician who takes a year to perfect a new trick when we want competent data scientists who know how to use the prepackaged tricks is completely failing at the job market that exists.  It's not that hard to become a good data scientist, but you have to give up on being super-duper special because you know what goes on under the hood.  Just turn the key and drive!

[Kron3007]

Serious case of deja vu here....

[polly_mer]

Serious case of deja vu here....

Yep, but we have new readers who can learn through advice to others.

[hamburger]

Thanks. I have not been to the forum for months. From some threads, it seems that the number of full time faculty positions has been reducing and it is getting worse due to the pandemic. So academia is a dead end especially for those who are not recent PhD?

[clean]

So academia is a dead end especially for those who are not recent PhD?

And this is not a new phenomenon!  I graduated over 20 years ago with a PhD and while in grad school I was reading about the '20 year depression in hiring', especially for Liberal Arts positions. There was supposed to be some long build up in near retirees that would soon bring a long awaited surge in vacancies and hiring.  IF these near retirees actually did retire, it does not look like they were replaced with full time employees, and those retirees were clearly not sufficient to absorb the massive surplus of certain PhD majors. 

Even with a relatively 'good' degree field, does not guarantee lots of jobs will be available.  In my experience, PhDs in Accounting seem to be short in supply. However, at my university, we are not hiring more, we are simply increasing class sizes.  And, except in the 'spring tax season' it is not too hard to find people in the community that are qualified to teach.

On the other hand, Finance PhDs are less in demand, but it is much less likely that there is an abundance of people in the community with 18 graduate hours in Finance who are qualified to teach undergraduate classes (according to our regional accreditor).  Still, a PhD in finance does not mean that there are a lot of job choices to pick from!

The COVID issues have stripped a lot of budget flexibility, so positions will be filled with visiting faculty or not at all. 

[Ruralguy]

For my school, it may indeed be not at all.

[eigen]

The COVID response at my school has been to shift back to almost entirely TT faculty. You can always ask them to do more work, because they're salaried.

[polly_mer]

Many of the Super Dinkies are nearly all TT/T because of the salary situation.  It's much easier to work salaried people harder than ride herd on a revolving door of part-timers.

The problem for the Super Dinkies is faculty are usually less than half of the required employees.  Faculty will often work long hours for peanuts.  The other professional class folks expect to be paid market rates for skills and knowledge that have value outside academia. 

Even in pretty rural places, you can find humanities faculty in most fields for median income for the county (possibly under $40k + benefits).  Getting a full staff of qualified IT folks, advancement folks, etc. usually costs national market rates.  Getting a warm body happy for a prestigious title isn't hard, but then the institution tends to limp along with unqualified people who bring the institution closer in the loop circling the drain.

[Ruralguy]

Quality advancement people are worth their weight in gold. It's years like this when you need that staff to pull in the extra million and set a record. Also, you need quality support such as IT or security goes down the drain, etc.. I'm not sure if my school can survive more than a decade because of grave enrollment threats.

In any case, academia isn't dead, but it will probably shrink to the top 50 research universities, top 50 small colleges, etc. State systems will exist, but probably shrinking to core branches or employing many fewer people at most others.
People will still do cutting edge research and undergrads will be able to get good degrees in interesting and relevant subjects. But the Super Dinkies and the Regular Dinkies will be gone or much less relevant.

[polly_mer]

In any case, academia isn't dead, but it will probably shrink to the top 50 research universities, top 50 small colleges, etc. State systems will exist, but probably shrinking to core branches or employing many fewer people at most others.

People will still do cutting edge research and undergrads will be able to get good degrees in interesting and relevant subjects. But the Super Dinkies and the Regular Dinkies will be gone or much less relevant.

Yep.  Higher ed isn't going away.  Even the humanities aren't going away.  However, many qualified individuals who want to be faculty and would be good as faculty will not get faculty jobs.