- Email: [email protected]
A model of adjuncts in higher education
Economics Letters 105 (2009) 68–70
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Economics Letters j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e t
A model of adjuncts in higher education Michael C. Kimmitt ⁎ University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Department of Economics, 541 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96826, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 27 May 2008 Revised 22 May 2009 Accepted 26 May 2009 Available online 6 June 2009
a b s t r a c t We examine the phenomenon of the expanded use of non-tenure-track positions (“adjuncts”) and construct a supply-side Harris–Todaro model. Low adjunct wages are attributable to a “Hope Rent” from the gap between private opportunities and tenure-track utility. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Higher education Harris–Todaro Dynamic incentives JEL classification: J31 I21 O15
1. Introduction A shift is taking place in institutions of higher education toward ever-increasing usage of non-tenure-track full-time and part-time faculty.1 This movement is characterized by several stylized facts: 1. Colleges consistently rely on a greater proportion of part-time faculty.2 2. Colleges show an increase in the percentage of full-time faculty who are not on the tenure track.3 3. The phenomenon is not evenly spread; some disciplines have much larger percentages of non-tenure-track faculty. For example, in 2003, approximately 52% of English faculty were part time, while only 29% of Economics faculty held that status (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005).4 4. Salaries for non-tenure-track faculty are much lower than for tenure-track faculty.5 ⁎ Tel.: +1 808 956 8791; fax: +1 808 956 4347. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 See the National Center for Education Studies (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005) for a statistical breakdown. 2
Ibid. Ibid, (Baldwin and Chronister, 2001). 4 Also, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2002b) documents that over 40% of part-time faculty reported accepting their positions due to lack of access to full-time employment, jumping to 61% in the Humanities (ibid). 5 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a; Baldwin and Chronister, 2001). 3
0165-1765/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2009.05.020
5. There exists a sense of dissatisfaction which is, again, unevenly distributed between disciplines. For example, job satisfaction for part-time faculty overall lies at 85%, but drops to 76% for part-time Humanities faculty (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a). A strange picture is painted; in some fields, highly educated persons with professional skills find themselves shunted into positions which are both unremunerative and unfulfilling. We present a model which fits these stylized facts, using as a basis the Harris– Todaro model of a Less Developed Country's labor market. As one might expect, the literature surrounding tenure is both large and contentious. McPherson and Schapiro (1999) and Chait (2002) address the ongoing tenure debate from an incentive-oriented institutional standpoint. Baldwin and Chronister (2001) take as given the movement toward non-tenure-track faculty and examine both the characteristics of the move and how it could be successfully integrated into the higher education system. Examining part-time faculty, Toutkoushian and Bellas (2003) come to the conclusion that they have lower job – but not salary – satisfaction. The literature discussing the movement toward non-tenure-track faculty is largely empirical; see Ehrenberg (2004) for a survey which includes this topic. We innovate by creating a formal model from the perspective of job seekers. Our approach is similar to the dynamic incentives literature, such as Holmstrom (1999) and Ghatak et al. (2001). However, we use the insights of the Harris–Todaro model from development economics (Harris and Todaro, 1970; Ray, 1998) to more completely explain the stylized facts of adjuncting.
M.C. Kimmitt / Economics Letters 105 (2009) 68–70
69
The Harris–Todaro two sector model is one of the most influential in development literature. It was originally devised to explain migration between urban and rural areas as a function of the persistent wage gap between urban formal jobs and agricultural work.6 In our model, we explain the wage gap between adjuncts and the private sector as resulting from the dynamic incentives created by the persistent utility differential between rare tenure-track openings and common private-sector positions. Essentially, where Harris–Todaro requires a participant to move to a particular location to participate in its job market, we require possession of a particular skillset.7 This approach inherently includes the variation which exists among academic disciplines. It further allows us to assess policy proposals meant to improve adjuncts' welfare. 2. A model of the adjunct job market Consider a two-period model of the Ph.D. job market.8 In the first period, a candidate entering the academic job market faces three possible results: 1) Receive an offer for a tenure-track position; 2) Do not receive such an offer and accept a temporary non-tenure-track position (i.e. become an “adjunct”); and 3) Do not receive a tenuretrack offer and take a position in the private sector (i.e. outside higher education).9 Candidates who accept options (1) or (3) remove themselves from the adjunct pool. A candidate who enters the private sector in the first period earns the private wage for both periods. An adjunct earns the adjunct wage for the first period, then has a fixed probability of receiving a tenure-track position in the second period. It is this adjunct wage – lower than the private wage – we seek to explain. We assume that utility is separable in “tenure” and “salary,” and that the private sector is large enough to absorb any number of candidates without affecting the prevailing wage. We also assume homogeneous adjuncts with preferences separable across time. Thus, we are given: τ, the number of tenure-track positions which become available to adjuncts; n, the size of the adjunct sector; wp, the private wage; and ut, the value of wages plus improved working conditions in the tenuretrack sector.10 A nontrivial adjunct sector requires that ut N wp, so we assume that as well. We solve for the adjunct wage wa. Utility for candidates entering the private sector is equal to twice the private wage: Up = 2wp. Adjunct utility is the sum of the first period's adjunct wages and the expected utility of the second period — the probability of getting a tenure-track position times the value of that position plus the probability of not doing so and accepting a private wage: Ua = wa + nτ ut + 1 − nτ wp . In equilibrium, the private and adjunct sectors must give their marginal decision makers the same utility (Up = Ua), implying: wa = wp −
τ ut − wp : n
ð1Þ
Our equilibrium adjunct wage is equal to the private wage minus the utility bonus of the tenure-track sector times the probability of entering it. Adjunct utility is equivalent to private-sector utility, but part of it is a “Hope Rent” based on the possibility of future access to tenure-track academia. The differential between the two wages increases first with nτ (the probability of receiving a tenure-track position), and second with the tenure-track utility bonus. Visually, this equilibrium takes the form of Fig. 1. 6
See Ray (1998) for a discussion and references on model variants. Papandrea and Albon (2004) utilize Harris–Todaro to explain employment in the arts, positing that there are nonpecuniary benefits to working as an artist. 8 The model straightforwardly extends to an infinite number of periods and gives essentially the same results in that format. 9 The decision is not quite this stark; there are long term non-tenure-track positions available at some institutions, such as DeVry University. We simplify for tractability. 10 Note that some tenure-track positions will be taken up by incoming Ph.D.'s. 7
Fig. 1. “The Harris–Todaro model, as applied to an academic job market”.
We can see why the wage gap varies across different disciplines. If the value of a private-sector position is relatively low (as in English and the humanities), a large wage gap can persist as adjuncts pursue the opportunity to participate in academia. If the value of a privatesector position is high (as in many engineering disciplines), adjuncts will receive a higher wage to match. Our simple model can give strong predictions regarding proposed adjunct-friendly policies. One class of such policies involves a movement from lifetime tenure to renewable multiyear contracts.11 The rationale is to create more tenure-track openings by forcing members of the baby boom generation, which currently occupies a demographic bulge at the top of the academic age spectrum, to retire. A renewable multiyear contract system would also decrease the value of tenure-track positions – but leave them still more valuable than private-sector positions – resulting in an exogenous increase in τ and decrease in ut: τ⁎ N τ, ut N u⁎t N wp, with asterisks indicating the new values of each variable after the switch. This increased turnover, however, will not increase Ua unless retirements can be made so numerous as to deplete the pool of adjuncts. Private-sector opportunities remain the limiting factor: Ua =Up, the basis of Eq. (1), will still hold. In addition, the new adjunct wage, wa⁎, could be higher or lower than the original wage, wa: wa4 − wa =
τ τ4 − τ u − u4t − ut − wp : n t n
ð2Þ
The increased probability of receiving a tenure-track position acts in opposition to the decrease in tenure-track utility, giving an unpredictable overall effect on the adjunct wage. 3. Conclusions Above, we describe a model which incorporates insights from the development literature to describe the academic job market for Ph.D's. We derive that the stylized facts of adjuncting are a supply-side phenomenon. Indeed, an increase in the availability of tenure-track positions would decrease equilibrium adjunct wages. Malthus lives on in the academic job market. Of course, institutions of higher education compete for candidates and face their own idiosyncratic constraints. Thus, in order to fully understand the market, we will need to incorporate models of the demand side to derive an endogenous labor market share (size) of the 11 For example, DeSales University offers 5-year renewable contracts with a 15% increase in salary. Boston University School of Management has offered 10-year renewable contracts since 1996. And Webster University offers its professors increased sabbatical time if they move to a variable multiyear contract system (Baldwin and Chronister, 2001; Jacobson, 2002).
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M.C. Kimmitt / Economics Letters 105 (2009) 68–70
adjunct sector. Then we could examine the case of heterogeneous adjuncts. In addition, it may be that adjunct faculty and tenure-track faculty are imperfect substitutes. Finally, while we have effectively modeled the structure of adjunct labor supply, we have not fully explained the feeling of dissatisfaction which exists in contemporary discussions of the adjuncting experience. These represent fruitful avenues for future exploration. Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to Katerina Sherstyuk for her extensive commentary and support. I would also like to thank the pseudonymous “Dean Dad” for useful comments. References Baldwin, Roger G., Chronister, Jay L., 2001. Teaching without Tenure: Policies and Practices for a New Era. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Chait, Richard P. (Ed.), 2002. The Questions of Tenure. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Ehrenberg, Ronald, 2004. Econometric studies of higher education. Journal of Econometrics 121, 19–37.
Ghatak, Maitreesh, Morelli, Massimo, Sjostrom, Tomas, 2001. Occupational choice and dynamic incentives. The Review of Economic Studies 68, 237. Harris, J.R., Todaro, M.P., 1970. Migration, unemployment & development: a two-sector analysis. American Economic Review 60, 126–142. Holmstrom, Bengt, 1999. Managerial incentive problems: a dynamic perspective. Review of Economic Studies 66, 169–182. Jacobson, Jennifer, 2002. Trading Tenure for More Money: The Chronicle of Higher Education. August 29, 2002. McPherson, Michael S., Schapiro, Morton Owen, 1999. Tenure issues in higher education. Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (1). Papandrea, Franco, Albon, Robert, 2004. A Model of Employment in the Arts: Australian Economic Papers. September 2004. Ray, Debraj, 1998. Development Economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Toutkoushian, Robert K., Bellas, Marcia L., 2003. The effects of part-time employment and gender on faculty earnings and satisfaction: evidence from the NSOPF:93. The Journal of Higher Education 74 (2). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a. 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:93), Part-time Instructional Faculty and Staff: Who They Are, What They Do, and What They Think, NCES 2002-163, Valerie M. Conley and David W. Leslie. Project Officer: Linda J. Zimbler, (NCES, Washington, DC. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002b. Tenure Status of Postsecondary Instructional Faculty and Staff: 1992–1998. NCES 2002-210, Basmat Parsad and Linda J. Zimbler. (NCES, Washington, DC. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005. Digest of Education Statistics. http://www.nces.ed.gov.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Economics Letters j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e t
A model of adjuncts in higher education Michael C. Kimmitt ⁎ University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Department of Economics, 541 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96826, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 27 May 2008 Revised 22 May 2009 Accepted 26 May 2009 Available online 6 June 2009
a b s t r a c t We examine the phenomenon of the expanded use of non-tenure-track positions (“adjuncts”) and construct a supply-side Harris–Todaro model. Low adjunct wages are attributable to a “Hope Rent” from the gap between private opportunities and tenure-track utility. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Higher education Harris–Todaro Dynamic incentives JEL classification: J31 I21 O15
1. Introduction A shift is taking place in institutions of higher education toward ever-increasing usage of non-tenure-track full-time and part-time faculty.1 This movement is characterized by several stylized facts: 1. Colleges consistently rely on a greater proportion of part-time faculty.2 2. Colleges show an increase in the percentage of full-time faculty who are not on the tenure track.3 3. The phenomenon is not evenly spread; some disciplines have much larger percentages of non-tenure-track faculty. For example, in 2003, approximately 52% of English faculty were part time, while only 29% of Economics faculty held that status (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005).4 4. Salaries for non-tenure-track faculty are much lower than for tenure-track faculty.5 ⁎ Tel.: +1 808 956 8791; fax: +1 808 956 4347. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 See the National Center for Education Studies (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005) for a statistical breakdown. 2
Ibid. Ibid, (Baldwin and Chronister, 2001). 4 Also, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2002b) documents that over 40% of part-time faculty reported accepting their positions due to lack of access to full-time employment, jumping to 61% in the Humanities (ibid). 5 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a; Baldwin and Chronister, 2001). 3
0165-1765/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2009.05.020
5. There exists a sense of dissatisfaction which is, again, unevenly distributed between disciplines. For example, job satisfaction for part-time faculty overall lies at 85%, but drops to 76% for part-time Humanities faculty (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a). A strange picture is painted; in some fields, highly educated persons with professional skills find themselves shunted into positions which are both unremunerative and unfulfilling. We present a model which fits these stylized facts, using as a basis the Harris– Todaro model of a Less Developed Country's labor market. As one might expect, the literature surrounding tenure is both large and contentious. McPherson and Schapiro (1999) and Chait (2002) address the ongoing tenure debate from an incentive-oriented institutional standpoint. Baldwin and Chronister (2001) take as given the movement toward non-tenure-track faculty and examine both the characteristics of the move and how it could be successfully integrated into the higher education system. Examining part-time faculty, Toutkoushian and Bellas (2003) come to the conclusion that they have lower job – but not salary – satisfaction. The literature discussing the movement toward non-tenure-track faculty is largely empirical; see Ehrenberg (2004) for a survey which includes this topic. We innovate by creating a formal model from the perspective of job seekers. Our approach is similar to the dynamic incentives literature, such as Holmstrom (1999) and Ghatak et al. (2001). However, we use the insights of the Harris–Todaro model from development economics (Harris and Todaro, 1970; Ray, 1998) to more completely explain the stylized facts of adjuncting.
M.C. Kimmitt / Economics Letters 105 (2009) 68–70
69
The Harris–Todaro two sector model is one of the most influential in development literature. It was originally devised to explain migration between urban and rural areas as a function of the persistent wage gap between urban formal jobs and agricultural work.6 In our model, we explain the wage gap between adjuncts and the private sector as resulting from the dynamic incentives created by the persistent utility differential between rare tenure-track openings and common private-sector positions. Essentially, where Harris–Todaro requires a participant to move to a particular location to participate in its job market, we require possession of a particular skillset.7 This approach inherently includes the variation which exists among academic disciplines. It further allows us to assess policy proposals meant to improve adjuncts' welfare. 2. A model of the adjunct job market Consider a two-period model of the Ph.D. job market.8 In the first period, a candidate entering the academic job market faces three possible results: 1) Receive an offer for a tenure-track position; 2) Do not receive such an offer and accept a temporary non-tenure-track position (i.e. become an “adjunct”); and 3) Do not receive a tenuretrack offer and take a position in the private sector (i.e. outside higher education).9 Candidates who accept options (1) or (3) remove themselves from the adjunct pool. A candidate who enters the private sector in the first period earns the private wage for both periods. An adjunct earns the adjunct wage for the first period, then has a fixed probability of receiving a tenure-track position in the second period. It is this adjunct wage – lower than the private wage – we seek to explain. We assume that utility is separable in “tenure” and “salary,” and that the private sector is large enough to absorb any number of candidates without affecting the prevailing wage. We also assume homogeneous adjuncts with preferences separable across time. Thus, we are given: τ, the number of tenure-track positions which become available to adjuncts; n, the size of the adjunct sector; wp, the private wage; and ut, the value of wages plus improved working conditions in the tenuretrack sector.10 A nontrivial adjunct sector requires that ut N wp, so we assume that as well. We solve for the adjunct wage wa. Utility for candidates entering the private sector is equal to twice the private wage: Up = 2wp. Adjunct utility is the sum of the first period's adjunct wages and the expected utility of the second period — the probability of getting a tenure-track position times the value of that position plus the probability of not doing so and accepting a private wage: Ua = wa + nτ ut + 1 − nτ wp . In equilibrium, the private and adjunct sectors must give their marginal decision makers the same utility (Up = Ua), implying: wa = wp −
τ ut − wp : n
ð1Þ
Our equilibrium adjunct wage is equal to the private wage minus the utility bonus of the tenure-track sector times the probability of entering it. Adjunct utility is equivalent to private-sector utility, but part of it is a “Hope Rent” based on the possibility of future access to tenure-track academia. The differential between the two wages increases first with nτ (the probability of receiving a tenure-track position), and second with the tenure-track utility bonus. Visually, this equilibrium takes the form of Fig. 1. 6
See Ray (1998) for a discussion and references on model variants. Papandrea and Albon (2004) utilize Harris–Todaro to explain employment in the arts, positing that there are nonpecuniary benefits to working as an artist. 8 The model straightforwardly extends to an infinite number of periods and gives essentially the same results in that format. 9 The decision is not quite this stark; there are long term non-tenure-track positions available at some institutions, such as DeVry University. We simplify for tractability. 10 Note that some tenure-track positions will be taken up by incoming Ph.D.'s. 7
Fig. 1. “The Harris–Todaro model, as applied to an academic job market”.
We can see why the wage gap varies across different disciplines. If the value of a private-sector position is relatively low (as in English and the humanities), a large wage gap can persist as adjuncts pursue the opportunity to participate in academia. If the value of a privatesector position is high (as in many engineering disciplines), adjuncts will receive a higher wage to match. Our simple model can give strong predictions regarding proposed adjunct-friendly policies. One class of such policies involves a movement from lifetime tenure to renewable multiyear contracts.11 The rationale is to create more tenure-track openings by forcing members of the baby boom generation, which currently occupies a demographic bulge at the top of the academic age spectrum, to retire. A renewable multiyear contract system would also decrease the value of tenure-track positions – but leave them still more valuable than private-sector positions – resulting in an exogenous increase in τ and decrease in ut: τ⁎ N τ, ut N u⁎t N wp, with asterisks indicating the new values of each variable after the switch. This increased turnover, however, will not increase Ua unless retirements can be made so numerous as to deplete the pool of adjuncts. Private-sector opportunities remain the limiting factor: Ua =Up, the basis of Eq. (1), will still hold. In addition, the new adjunct wage, wa⁎, could be higher or lower than the original wage, wa: wa4 − wa =
τ τ4 − τ u − u4t − ut − wp : n t n
ð2Þ
The increased probability of receiving a tenure-track position acts in opposition to the decrease in tenure-track utility, giving an unpredictable overall effect on the adjunct wage. 3. Conclusions Above, we describe a model which incorporates insights from the development literature to describe the academic job market for Ph.D's. We derive that the stylized facts of adjuncting are a supply-side phenomenon. Indeed, an increase in the availability of tenure-track positions would decrease equilibrium adjunct wages. Malthus lives on in the academic job market. Of course, institutions of higher education compete for candidates and face their own idiosyncratic constraints. Thus, in order to fully understand the market, we will need to incorporate models of the demand side to derive an endogenous labor market share (size) of the 11 For example, DeSales University offers 5-year renewable contracts with a 15% increase in salary. Boston University School of Management has offered 10-year renewable contracts since 1996. And Webster University offers its professors increased sabbatical time if they move to a variable multiyear contract system (Baldwin and Chronister, 2001; Jacobson, 2002).
70
M.C. Kimmitt / Economics Letters 105 (2009) 68–70
adjunct sector. Then we could examine the case of heterogeneous adjuncts. In addition, it may be that adjunct faculty and tenure-track faculty are imperfect substitutes. Finally, while we have effectively modeled the structure of adjunct labor supply, we have not fully explained the feeling of dissatisfaction which exists in contemporary discussions of the adjuncting experience. These represent fruitful avenues for future exploration. Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to Katerina Sherstyuk for her extensive commentary and support. I would also like to thank the pseudonymous “Dean Dad” for useful comments. References Baldwin, Roger G., Chronister, Jay L., 2001. Teaching without Tenure: Policies and Practices for a New Era. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Chait, Richard P. (Ed.), 2002. The Questions of Tenure. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Ehrenberg, Ronald, 2004. Econometric studies of higher education. Journal of Econometrics 121, 19–37.
Ghatak, Maitreesh, Morelli, Massimo, Sjostrom, Tomas, 2001. Occupational choice and dynamic incentives. The Review of Economic Studies 68, 237. Harris, J.R., Todaro, M.P., 1970. Migration, unemployment & development: a two-sector analysis. American Economic Review 60, 126–142. Holmstrom, Bengt, 1999. Managerial incentive problems: a dynamic perspective. Review of Economic Studies 66, 169–182. Jacobson, Jennifer, 2002. Trading Tenure for More Money: The Chronicle of Higher Education. August 29, 2002. McPherson, Michael S., Schapiro, Morton Owen, 1999. Tenure issues in higher education. Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (1). Papandrea, Franco, Albon, Robert, 2004. A Model of Employment in the Arts: Australian Economic Papers. September 2004. Ray, Debraj, 1998. Development Economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Toutkoushian, Robert K., Bellas, Marcia L., 2003. The effects of part-time employment and gender on faculty earnings and satisfaction: evidence from the NSOPF:93. The Journal of Higher Education 74 (2). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002a. 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:93), Part-time Instructional Faculty and Staff: Who They Are, What They Do, and What They Think, NCES 2002-163, Valerie M. Conley and David W. Leslie. Project Officer: Linda J. Zimbler, (NCES, Washington, DC. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2002b. Tenure Status of Postsecondary Instructional Faculty and Staff: 1992–1998. NCES 2002-210, Basmat Parsad and Linda J. Zimbler. (NCES, Washington, DC. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2005. Digest of Education Statistics. http://www.nces.ed.gov.