Abstract
Declines in state appropriations have decreased the ability of public research universities to hire faculty, particularly tenure line faculty. Many universities have grown nonresident enrollment as a substitute for state funding. This study investigates whether faculty hiring was associated differently with nonresident enrollment growth versus resident enrollment growth. Grounded in labor demand theory, to study this relationship we estimate institution-level panel statistical models for the academic years 2002–2003 to 2016–2017. Results indicate that nonresident enrollment growth had a stronger positive association with full-time tenure line hires than resident enrollment growth. In contrast, employment of full-time and part-time non-tenure track faculty was not associated differently to nonresident versus resident enrollment growth. The institutional policy implication is that nonresident enrollment growth may be a viable strategy to finance tenure line faculty hires. However, state policymakers should recognize that many public research universities and most regional public universities face weak nonresident enrollment demand and are unlikely to compensate for declines in state funding by growing nonresident enrollment.
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Notes
University mission statements and scholarship on public research universities often highlight the tripartite mission of teaching, research, and public service (Kerr, 2001).
We also estimated models with three-year lags (available upon request) but do not present these results because three-year lag models did not appreciably improve model fit based on AIC value.
The IPEDS Glossary defines faculty status as follows: “A status designated by the institution according to the institution's policies. ‘Faculty’ may include staff with academic appointments (instruction, research, public service) and other staff members who are appointed as faculty members” (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019).
Models which excluded the 2016–2017 year yielded similar results to those presented within this study and are available upon request of the authors.
To make trends as consistent as possible, the calculations for Fig. 2 were based upon years in which new faculty hire data was mandatory for all institutions.
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Jaquette, O., Curs, B.R. Enrollment Growth and Faculty Hiring at Public Research Universities. Res High Educ 64, 349–378 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-022-09707-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-022-09707-6