CSU System Plans to Hire 700 Full-Time Faculty

California State University system plans to hire 700 full-time faculty for the upcoming school year to address course bottlenecks and fill holes left by retiring professors.

David Dowell, interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at California State University Long Beach, said lecturers perform a great service to universities and students rely on them, but tenure-track faculty “bring the stability” by anchoring the curriculum and staying on the cutting edge of research, in addition to their teaching duties. Dowell also said that CSULB will likely hire about 60 tenure-track professors, with three in nursing and three in accounting already signed on.

“Now that we’re seeing an increase in revenue and we’re seeing an increase in enrollment, we’re trying to build back the level of tenure-track members, so this is a step in the right direction,” said CSU Spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp.

The CSU system hired about 1,000 faculty for 2013-14 to help reduce upper and lower division courses that crowd out students and push back their graduation schedules. The CSU system is trying to reverse a years-long trend of lecturers outnumbering tenure-track professors on campuses throughout the system.

In 1991, more than 63 percent of the CSU system’s 17,405 professors were tenure-track faculty members, compared with 42.8 percent in 2013. In 2013, out of the system’s 23,107 faculty, 9,886 were tenure-track, compared with 11,028 in 1991, according to CSU data.

While the number of full-time faculty slid over the last two decades, enrollment at CSU exploded from 361,904 students enrolled in fall 1991 to more than 446,000 students currently.

CSU aims to add another 20,000 students this fall. Uhlenkamp said the 700 new tenure-track hires will likely happen without the additional $95 million CSU requested and which it is still lobbying for. But if that money does come in, it may mean even more hiring next spring.

regions: Los Angeles

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