Visiting Faculty: Are Their Numbers on the Rise?

by Jennifer Berkshire

They teach courses, advise students, even attend faculty
meetings. But while their responsibilities may require a full-time
commitment, these academics are employed on a strictly short-term
basis. They are the visiting faculty, and when their terms
end, after a semester, a year, or perhaps three years, they
have no choice but to pack up their books, their bags and
move on.

Visiting faculty are the nomads of higher education, says
Rich Moser, national field representative of the American
Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the author
of “The New Academic Labor System, Corporatization, and the
Renewal of Academic Citizenship.”

“They are essentially a gypsy class of people, moving on
to a different location every few years. And because they’re
considered full-time faculty, often teaching a heavier load
than their tenured counterparts, they occupy a strange, in-between
position,” says Moser. “They fall through the cracks.”

But while the transformation of the academic workforce in
recent decades has been well documented, there is no clear
data regarding the number of visiting faculty positions in
American universities–or whether these positions are on the
rise. Recent studies such as Teaching Without Tenure,
by Roger Baldwin and Jay Chronister, (Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2000) survey full-time non-tenure-track faculty, but
leave visiting faculty out of the equation.

“We were more interested in those full-time faculty who were
looking for a ‘permanent’ position,” says Chronister. What
is clear, however, is that visiting faculty form yet another
layer within a contingent academic workforce that is radically
reshaping the university workplace.

“This is another example of the increased use of temporary
faculty,” says the AAUP’s Moser. “By introducing different
forms of contingency into the university, administrators create
new ways to avoid responsibility to teachers and their students.
Ultimately their goal is a multi-tiered university system
in which there are lots of distinctions between faculty, the
kind that make unity almost impossible.”

What’s more, anecdotal evidence from visiting faculty throughout
the academy paints a compelling case that their numbers are
indeed on the rise. While visiting positions were traditionally
used as a means of filling in for absentee faculty–for professors
on sabbatical, or out on maternity leave, for example–increasingly,
“visitors” are just another form of flexible academic labor.
Their titles vary, as do their terms, but these academic nomads
are part of the non-tenured faculty who now teach the majority
of undergraduate courses in this country.

Just Visiting

Biologist Jani Lewis considers herself lucky. After a three-year
visiting faculty stint at the University of Toledo, she landed
a tenure-track position at the State University of New York’s
Geneseo campus. Lewis attributes much of her success on the
job market to the teaching and research experience gleaned
during her years in Ohio.

“As a Ph.D. student in the sciences, you spend all you time
doing research,” says Lewis. “You don’t get any teaching experience;
you may not ever write a syllabus. This was a great opportunity
for me to experiment with teaching, and it definitely helped
when it came time to apply for jobs.”

Even Lewis was surprised, though, by the number of temporary
positions she encountered during her job search. “You’re seeing
more and more positions that are one year or three years,”
she says, “and I think they’re going to become even more common.”

Trends with in the academic sciences would seem to bear out
Lewis’s predictions. Years of budget cuts at research institutions,
coupled with a surge in retirement by “baby boomer” scientists,
has resulted in a hiring crunch. And with administrators increasingly
unwilling to hire tenure-track faculty, a whole new class
of contract faculty is emerging.

At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, faculty
and administrators have been battling over a proposal to introduce
three-year contracts for full-time non-tenure-track staff.
The university argues that years of underfunding by the state,
and the resulting loss of faculty, make short-term contracts
necessary.

“We didn’t march down this road because of a desire to be
there,” said UI Provost Richard Herman last year. “We marched
down this road out of necessity.”

And it’s not just the sciences that are opening their doors
to more visitors. In liberal arts colleges, where tenure-track
jobs are at a premium, pressure to produce high quality scholarship
has more and more full-time faculty leaving their jobs–albeit
temporarily–to do research.

“More research means more absences,” says Elliot Young, an
assistant professor of Latin American history at Lewis and
Clark University. It’s a trend that he finds personally troubling.

“As
the school moves towards scholarly achievement, junior faculty
get more fellowships: they take more time off because they
have to get that book out. It means that they can’t be here,
which means an increase in the number of visiting and adjunct
faculty. But our students come here because they want close
contact with professors. What does that say about our mission?”

Same Job, New Title

When it comes to visiting, composer Tamar Diesendruck knows all
about it. During a long career composing chamber music, she
has “visited” some of the top music departments in the country.

“I’ve held visiting positions at the San Francisco Conservatory
of Music, the University of Pittsburgh, NYU, the University
of Wisconsin. As a rule, I applied for superb jobs in great
locations.” But asked if hers has been a glamorous existence,
Diesendruck is quick to differ. “Usually, visiting is a totally
exploitative situation. As far as I’m concerned, visiting
is just another name for adjunct faculty.”

Precisely
what is the difference between the two positions? In a world
of ever more distinct academic identities, that question is
becoming increasingly difficult to answer. Take the English
Department at the University of Illinois, for example. There,
more than eighty “visiting staff”–compared to about fifty
tenure-track faculty–teach English courses. The visitors
are made up of recent doctoral graduates who have yet to find
jobs, along with a handful of full-time visiting instructors.

“This
is a department that has a huge need for temporary labor,”
says Dave Kamper, the communications officer for the Graduate
Employees Organization. “As the university cuts down on tenure-track
positions, there is a hole in the teaching rota that has to
be filled. And then you have a pool of graduate students who
are very worried about the job market and have a real need
for employment.”

Adjunct is a Dirty Word

While
visiting positions may offer little more job security than
an adjunct faculty position, administrators seem to be catching
on to the fact that when it comes to temporary academic labor,
titles speak volumes. And with pressure mounting on administrators
to ease their reliance on the lowest paid, worst treated of
the academic workforce, many are discovering a new tool at
their disposal: short-term visiting faculty positions.

In
an academic world increasingly populated by visitors, these
stories may point to the most important trend of all: for
the estimated half-million adjunct faculty who now teach in
the higher education system, even a year of job security can
represent a marked improvement compared with eking out a course-by-course
existence. Historian Mitchell Newton-Matza has just settled
into a one-year visiting faculty position at Chicago’s University
of St. Francis, after three years of juggling adjunct work
with a full-time non-academic job.

“I have to say I think visiting is better,” says Newton-Matza.
“I don’t feel separate now. There’s a real dividing line when
you’re an adjunct.”