In an article posted online on Inside Higher Ed, the University is mentioned as having a misleading percentage of full-time faculty in the U.S. News and World Report by including certain adjunct professors on the list of faculty and excluding others.
U.S. News and World Report uses various data to rank the nation’s colleges. The magazine publishes not only the overall rank of the school, but also how the school compares in different categories, including the percentage of full-time faculty. The issues arise over whether or not adjunct professors should be counted as full-time faculty members.
According to Director of University Planning and Analysis Karen Helm, an adjunct professor is one “whose full-time job is not in the University.”
Often they are professionals contracted to teach one class at a time.
Lewis Carson, assistant director of University Planning and Analysis, said adjunct professors don’t have the same requirements as full-time professors.
“People in the adjunct level are not participating in the ‘life of the University.’ They’re not on committees … they’re not expected to participate in research like other professors.”
The University’s Web site lists hundreds of adjunct faculty employed by the college. However, Helm said the University counts as faculty only those “whose sole or primary employer is N.C. State.”
This means that while full-time adjunct professors are counted as faculty, part-time adjunct professors are excluded from the list. According to Inside Higher Ed, this results in a misleading 96 percent full-time faculty rating found in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings.
Helm defended the data.
“We report the data using the definitions provided by U.S. News and World Report,” she said.
According to her, U.S. News and World Report asks what percentage of faculty is full-time, and does not distinguish between regular and adjunct professors. She said the University submits the same data to the magazine as it gives to the state.
NCSU was not the only college in the article criticized for its reporting practices. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln had the top full-time faculty percentage of 100 percent. When the college was questioned as to how it could have such a high percentage, it responded that it excluded all adjunct faculty from the report because they thought that was what U.S. News and World Report wanted.
“Having adjunct positions considered faculty appears to serve both the University and the adjunct in positive ways,” Alvin Braswell, an adjunct biology professor, said in an e-mail.
Braswell noted that “to remove the faculty designation from adjunct faculty could diminish the University’s ability to secure and retain adjuncts that contribute much to the University’s skill set and ability to conduct quality education and research.”
For its part, U.S. News and World Report defends its rankings, stating, “U.S. News believes the faculty definition that we use is very clear and that adjuncts should be counted” on Inside Higher Ed.
The magazine also mentions that the full-time faculty percentage only accounts for one percent of the overall college rankings. However, questions continue to be raised about whether or not the rankings are valid, even if only a small part of the overall statistics are affected.