What might the faculty look like in 2050? That question was explored by Adrianna Kezar and Elizabeth Holcombe in a study published recently by the AAUP. The national sample included 1,553 respondents (more than 1,100 faculty members, about 350 provosts and deans, and educational policy makers.

Here’s a quote from the article: “We found agreement about the desirability of

1. increasing the number of full-time faculty;
2. creating teaching-only tenure-track positions;
3. reducing reliance on part-time faculty;
4. ensuring some sort of scholarly component in all faculty roles;
5. fostering more collaboration among faculty across and within campus;
6. revising incentives and reward structures and policies to better reflect different institutional priorities;
7. allowing some differentiation of roles focused on teaching and research, and developing a broader view of scholarship such as that epitomized in Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered;
8. allowing more flexibility to stop the tenure clock for family or other personal needs; and
9. protecting academic freedom, inclusion in shared governance, equitable pay, opportunities for career advancement and professional development, fair grievance procedures and due process, and access to resources to conduct one’s work.”