by Laurie Henry

Laura Palmer Noone is provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Phoenix. The for-profit university has been accredited since 1978 and now boasts an enrollment of 68,000 on 85 campuses in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and British Columbia. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, about 90 percent of University of Phoenix courses, both on-site and online (about ten percent of all courses offered), are taught by part-time faculty members, although the number of full-time faculty members has increased in the last four years, in part because of the necessity of meeting regional accreditation guidelines. In 1998, there were around 140 full-time faculty members at the University of Phoenix, compared with over 5,000 part-time "practitioner" faculty members.

According to the University of Phoenix's web site, http://onl.uophx.edu/recruitment/html/pay.html compensation for part-time instructors is $900 to $1,280 per online course, depending on whether the course offers undergraduate or graduate credit and on the degree of the instructor. Compensation for on-site faculty is from $950 to $2,000 for a five- or six-week course, which typically meets for four hours once a week. Tuition for University of Phoenix students is usually about $6,000 a year. The tuition is significantly less than the average $15,380 annual tuition (according to a 1999 College Board survey) at a private four-year college in the U.S., although much more than the $3,356 average annual tuition at a four-year public college within the student's home state.

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