Future of the Professoriate

This paper considers the professoriate of the past and present in an attempt to provide a vision for the future. Contingent labor has become nearly half of the instructional workforce at colleges and universities in the United States. What does this reliance mean for the professoriate moving forward? If colleges and universities continue to see the professoriate as the place where costs can be cut through the use of transient labor, the heart of American higher education will be damaged irreparably. Likewise, if those remaining professors that hold full time permanent appointments fail to recognize the role their negligence has played in the erosion of the profession and use truly shared governance to halt the trend, American higher education will forever lose its place as the international leader. Will autobot academic delivery rule the profession or is there still time to reestablish the significance of the professoriate? This work explores these questions and makes recommendations for reform.