Alan Finder of The New York Times recently wrote an article about the decline of tenure track postions at American colleges and universities. This is hardly a new story, of course, since the decline has been going on for at least the past fifteen years. I guess that the point behind the article is that the situation has reached a new low point.
I have to admit that I found the article rather disappointing. Finder says nothing about the rampant growth of administration. Trust me, there's been no comparable decline in that particular type of university employment. This is why the typical administrative excuse of "tight budgets" always rings hollow. I knew academics who permanently gave up teaching to became administrators in order to have a decent job. But I never knew anyone who left the ranks of adminstration to become a professor in order to secure a better position.