Georgia abolishes tenure.

[marshwiggle]

There's a large survey from 2012,

http://www.academicworkforce.org/survey.html

I believe that's the one I saw. A few interesting results from that one:

• 43% (the biggest group) were teaching a single course. The next biggest group, teaching two courses, was 28%.

...

There are two tables (16 and 18) with different numbers, with table 18 seeming to be more representative based on the notes.

I looked at the notes for the two tables several times, and I'm still not clear on the difference. Maybe Table 18 refers to sections, and Table 16 refers to courses, so someone teaching two sections of one course would show up as "one" in Table 16 and "two" in Table 18. That's the only way I can make sense of it. The only question that both are supposed to refer to is
"How many courses are you teaching in fall 2010?"

Based on the "Teaching Load" section and questionnaire itself, the values in table 16 were calculated by summing up number of courses participants have described in detail (they were supposed to answer 15 questions about each). In contrast, Table 18 is based on direct answers to the question about number of courses.
So, 19.4% (Table 18) answered said that they teach 3 courses, but only 15.5% (Table 16) provided information about all 3.

From the body of the report:

Seventy-eight percent were teaching at a single institution (table 17). The largest subset—42.6%—was teaching a single course at a single institution in fall 2010.

The freeway flier is definitely an outlier.

Also:

One inference we draw is that a significant
number of the 9,162 respondents who reported on specific classes they were teaching exited the
survey before they had completed questionnaires for all the classes they taught that term, leading
to underreporting for courses beyond one or two.

It sounds like they're not entirely sure how to explain the discrepancy in their own findings.

[mamselle]

Or the survey was unreasonably long for people with four preps a week to finish.

M.

[mleok]

This raises a question I had. In STEM, it's quite common to have large courses, but if it's needed to deal with students in smaller groups then that's done by things like tutorials, typically run by TAs. I'm guessing in humanities, it's much more common to have lots of small sections instead. Is that true? If that's the case, it raises the question of why the difference is required, since the STEM model is a lot more cost effective, based on the idea that only a part of course delivery is interaction-intensive, so only that portion needs to be done in smaller groups.

We keep saying the humanities when we're really referring to things like English Composition, which do indeed have many small sections, because they're really about practicing writing, so it's more akin to a lab in STEM than a typical STEM lecture based course.

[Wahoo Redux]

This raises a question I had. In STEM, it's quite common to have large courses, but if it's needed to deal with students in smaller groups then that's done by things like tutorials, typically run by TAs. I'm guessing in humanities, it's much more common to have lots of small sections instead. Is that true? If that's the case, it raises the question of why the difference is required, since the STEM model is a lot more cost effective, based on the idea that only a part of course delivery is interaction-intensive, so only that portion needs to be done in smaller groups.

We keep saying the humanities when we're really referring to things like English Composition, which do indeed have many small sections, because they're really about practicing writing, so it's more akin to a lab in STEM than a typical STEM lecture based course.

Marshy has always tried to square humanities classes with what he knows of STEM education.

They really are two different things.

[marshwiggle]

This raises a question I had. In STEM, it's quite common to have large courses, but if it's needed to deal with students in smaller groups then that's done by things like tutorials, typically run by TAs. I'm guessing in humanities, it's much more common to have lots of small sections instead. Is that true? If that's the case, it raises the question of why the difference is required, since the STEM model is a lot more cost effective, based on the idea that only a part of course delivery is interaction-intensive, so only that portion needs to be done in smaller groups.

We keep saying the humanities when we're really referring to things like English Composition, which do indeed have many small sections, because they're really about practicing writing, so it's more akin to a lab in STEM than a typical STEM lecture based course.

Marshy has always tried to square humanities classes with what he knows of STEM education.

They really are two different things.

I get that. But, as Mleok said, the small sections are more like labs in STEM. Profs don't *typically grade lab reports , especially first year lab reports, in STEM. TAs do that. Since most of the evaluation and feedback required are at a very basic level, it's not cost-effective to pay someone with a PhD to do it. How much of the evaluation and feedback needed for English composition are at a level that it requires a PhD? It seems at least part of the low pay that adjuncts receive for doing that is not that far from the kind of pay TAs in STEM get for what sounds like a job with a similar level of required expertise.


(* In smaller upper year labs of mostly majors, sometimes profs do grade the lab reports, since they are at a much more advanced level.)

[mahagonny]

This raises a question I had. In STEM, it's quite common to have large courses, but if it's needed to deal with students in smaller groups then that's done by things like tutorials, typically run by TAs. I'm guessing in humanities, it's much more common to have lots of small sections instead. Is that true? If that's the case, it raises the question of why the difference is required, since the STEM model is a lot more cost effective, based on the idea that only a part of course delivery is interaction-intensive, so only that portion needs to be done in smaller groups.

We keep saying the humanities when we're really referring to things like English Composition, which do indeed have many small sections, because they're really about practicing writing, so it's more akin to a lab in STEM than a typical STEM lecture based course.

Marshy has always tried to square humanities classes with what he knows of STEM education.

They really are two different things.

I get that. But, as Mleok said, the small sections are more like labs in STEM. Profs don't *typically grade lab reports , especially first year lab reports, in STEM. TAs do that. Since most of the evaluation and feedback required are at a very basic level, it's not cost-effective to pay someone with a PhD to do it. How much of the evaluation and feedback needed for English composition are at a level that it requires a PhD? It seems at least part of the low pay that adjuncts receive for doing that is not that far from the kind of pay TAs in STEM get for what sounds like a job with a similar level of required expertise.


(* In smaller upper year labs of mostly majors, sometimes profs do grade the lab reports, since they are at a much more advanced level.)

The reason there are fewer TA's is they can get adjunct faculty with PhD to do the work for almost nothing. The reason they have PhD is they were having more fun being a student than they would have joining the workforce. As Thomas Sowell says, we are all dropouts. The trick is dropping out at the right time.

[Hibush]

Profs don't *typically grade lab reports , especially first year lab reports, in STEM. TAs do that. Since most of the evaluation and feedback required are at a very basic level, it's not cost-effective to pay someone with a PhD to do it. How much of the evaluation and feedback needed for English composition are at a level that it requires a PhD? It seems at least part of the low pay that adjuncts receive for doing that is not that far from the kind of pay TAs in STEM get for what sounds like a job with a similar level of required expertise.

If a TA can be thought of as having a (sometimes light) 1/1 load for $25,000 to $40,000 (depending on school), that's better than the the adjuncts' deal by a fair bit. If composition adjuncts were getting a similar rate per class for a comfortable 3/3 schedule, the main labor issues might be different.

[Aster]

I get that. But, as Mleok said, the small sections are more like labs in STEM. Profs don't *typically grade lab reports , especially first year lab reports, in STEM. TAs do that. Since most of the evaluation and feedback required are at a very basic level, it's not cost-effective to pay someone with a PhD to do it. \

They might not do it at most R1's, but it's typical at many/most R2's, SLAC's, and other institutions. Only the R1's will tend to have a sufficient quantity of graduate student labor across all STEM disciplines to fully delegate lower division teaching and assessment duties.

Also, adjunct/VAP teaching faculty are distinctly in the minority at most all institutions excepting community colleges and the for-profit businesses. I rarely see an R1 or R2 academic department with more than 20% teaching faculty who are off the tenure track.

[mleok]

Profs don't *typically grade lab reports , especially first year lab reports, in STEM. TAs do that. Since most of the evaluation and feedback required are at a very basic level, it's not cost-effective to pay someone with a PhD to do it. How much of the evaluation and feedback needed for English composition are at a level that it requires a PhD? It seems at least part of the low pay that adjuncts receive for doing that is not that far from the kind of pay TAs in STEM get for what sounds like a job with a similar level of required expertise.

If a TA can be thought of as having a (sometimes light) 1/1 load for $25,000 to $40,000 (depending on school), that's better than the the adjuncts' deal by a fair bit. If composition adjuncts were getting a similar rate per class for a comfortable 3/3 schedule, the main labor issues might be different.

But to circle back to a point I made earlier, it's because GTAs in STEM cross-subsidize the research mission of the university, because the graduate students also do research with faculty. Adjuncts in English composition are being hired solely for their instructional role.

[mleok]

Also, adjunct/VAP teaching faculty are distinctly in the minority at most all institutions excepting community colleges and the for-profit businesses. I rarely see an R1 or R2 academic department with more than 20% teaching faculty who are off the tenure track.

Well, I think that depends on the field. In a STEM department at a R1, we would not rely significantly on adjunct faculty, at least those who are not connected in some way to our research mission, be they postdocs, graduate students, or visitors who also participate in research with the regular faculty. But, I can imagine that English composition at a public R1 does rely much more heavily on adjuncts.