For the last couple of days, I’ve written about the dangers of losing occupational education faculty. It’s happening at community colleges around the country. When community colleges lose faculty members, it means reducing class offerings, increasing class sizes, and in some cases, closing programs.
You can see the impact of these losses on Washtenaw Community College by comparing data reported in 2007 and 2014.
The situation on the ground at WCC was very similar in those two years, in terms of WCC’s unduplicated headcount and the number of credit hours delivered.
| Year | Unduplicated Headcount | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 20,469 | 251,647 |
| 2014 | 20,664 | 251,091 |
There are some stark differences, however.
| Year | Full-time faculty | Part-Time Faculty | Full-Time Administration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 206 | 661 | 151 |
| 2014 | 156 | 575 | 171 |
In 2007, WCC employed 206 full-time faculty members and 661 part-time instructors. By 2014, the size of WCC’s full-time faculty had shrunk by more than 24%, even though the number of students was substantially the same. The size of WCC’s part-time faculty had shrunk by 13%. At the same time, the size of the administration had increased by more than 13% while the student population had grown by less than 1%.
Practically speaking, the WCC administration reduced the number of faculty members while the student population stayed the same. At the same time, it increased its own size to manage services for the same number of students.
Faculty Members Matter To Students. Administrators do not.
It is hard to imagine the circumstance under which WCC will add 50 full-time faculty positions. Those teaching positions are gone forever. It’s also hard to imagine a circumstance under which this Administration will reduce its size to refocus WCC’s resources on mission-centric activities. If I add 2021’s data into the previous tables, the numbers look like this:
| Year | Unduplicated Headcount | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 20,469 | 251,647 |
| 2014 | 20,664 | 251,091 |
| 2021 | 18734 | 227,755 |
| Year | Full-time faculty | Part-Time Faculty | Full-Time Administration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 206 | 661 | 151 |
| 2014 | 156 | 575 | 171 |
| 2021 | 155 | 503 | 179 |
At some point, the WCC Board of Trustees must acknowledge that increasing the size of the administration while decreasing the size of the instructional staff has not resulted in a net gain of students or an increase in the number of credit hours. (Hint: students do not choose an institution for its administration. They do, however, choose institutions based on the faculty and available programs.)
Why does WCC need an administration that is 19% larger than it was in 2007 to manage nearly 10% fewer students? More importantly, why aren’t any of the WCC Trustees asking these questions?
Photo Credit: Mark Morgan , via Flickr
