Interview with Laura Palmer Noone

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.

LH: The advantages of hiring professionals who are active in their fields, especially in majors like business and nursing, are pretty clear. What possible disadvantages did you consider when you decided to hire a faculty made up almost exclusively of part-time instructors?

LPN: From our perspective, there really are no disadvantages, but you must understand that our faculty are part-time only in the sense of employment with the University of Phoenix. We require our faculty have employment in their discipline before they can qualify to become faculty of the University of Phoenix. As an institution dedicated to working adult students, our programs are designed for adults. Research shows that adults overwhelmingly choose career-related programs when they return to school. Hence, the use of practitioners instead of full-time academicians was the only sound decision. In fact, the hardest decision was the one to hire some full-time faculty, since we believe so strongly in the practitioner faculty model.

LH: Has it been practical and possible to adhere to the goal of hiring primarily part-time instructors?

LPN: Yes. We have found that there are many qualified, degreed, working professionals who would like to teach on a part-time basis. Our requirement is that our faculty be employed in their discipline with five years of practical experience in the discipline. In order to qualify to teach accounting, you would need not only a masters’ degree in accounting, but also be employed as an accountant full-time.

LH: Have there been any unanticipated difficulties due to the use of a large percentage of part-time faculty?

LPN: Since our system was designed this way from the beginning, there really have not been any issues. In fact, we believe this model gives us a distinct advantage. We have very low turnover rate. It is a bit hard to calculate, but I can tell you that over 90 percent of the faculty that have taught for the university 10 years ago are still teaching for the university.

LH: I notice that outside of the associates degree program, or for students who do not pass the proficiency tests, the curriculum lacks certain courses that many schools require, freshman composition, for example. How was the decision to keep the number of humanities requirements to a minimum made?

LPN: The university does have a general education requirement and a general-education course distribution requirement. This is necessary rather than prescribed course(s), because 97 percent of our students transfer in prior transcripted course work. By allowing students to satisfy the breadth of general education requirements through a series of mechanisms, we allow the greatest flexibility for our adult students.

LH: How much input do faculty members have on the curriculum and content of courses required for the various majors?

LPN: Faculty are the authors of our curriculum. Although our curriculum is standardized at the course-objective and textbook-selection level, it is the faculty within the teaching discipline that create the courses. A central committee exists for each of the seven academic colleges. That committee is comprised of the dean and full- and part-time faculty from each campus within the system. The role of that committee is to gather both formative and summative reviews that then drive our curriculum development and review process. The curriculum is then prioritized into a Master Curriculum Agenda, which is ratified by the University’s Academic Cabinet. The Cabinet is comprised of voting members from each campus location. The interesting aspect about the University’s governance structure is that the Cabinet representatives are from the practitioner (part-time) faculty.

LH: Are faculty members involved in the process of hiring other faculty members in their discipline?

LPN: Yes. Both full-time and practitioner faculty do the hiring and ongoing evaluation of faculty at each campus.

LH: What’s next for the University of Phoenix? Do you have plans, for example, to expand further into graduate education?

LPN: The University plans to expand its offerings through new programs, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as expand into new states.

LH: Will you probably continue to hire most professors on a part-time basis?

LPN: Absolutely!

LH: Do you have plans at some point to market the University of Phoenix toward traditional-aged students as well as toward adult learners?

LPN: No. The University of Phoenix model is designed for adults and builds upon the work of such noted experts as Dr. Malcolm Knowles, Dr. Stephen Brookfield and many others. The accelerated model, using collaborative learning and cohorts works less well for students who do not have a real world framework in which to contextualize their learning.