The Career Ladder

 My brother sent me a link to an article in The Denver Post to the effect that the University of Denver is shutting down two departments, of Religious Studies and of Electrical and Computer Engineering. I thought this curious in part because DU had closed the entire College of Engineering about 1975, then revived it.

(In this part of Colorado, the 'U' goes last in the abbreviation, wherever it appears in the name. The University of Denver is DU, the University of Colorado is CU, and references to UD or UC will not be understood by locals.)

The article also said that the faculty had voted to close three other departments: of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies, of Philosophy, and of Socio-Legal Studies. This sounded like The Raft of the Medusa, though of course I don't know what the deliberations might have been. I know nothing of the first and third offered sacrifices, but I had a look at the Department of Philosophy's web page.

The ranks stood out. In the usual academic understanding, an assistant professor hopes for tenure, an associate professor or professor has tenure. Here the only associate professors were emeritus. There were four professors (and one professor emeritus). The other two members were visiting assistant teaching professors.  As I read this, the components of this title mean

• visiting: don't sign a long lease
• assistant: not tenured
• teaching: heavier teaching schedule (likely running to the intro courses)
• professor: a courtesy

It seems to me that such a billet is more or less that of an adjunct, but paid by the year (or term) rather than the class.

When I was in college, even I could see weaknesses in the model that had carried American academia from 1946 through 1976, that is to say had worked well enough in a period of long expansion. By then such boomers as wanted degrees largely had them, and enrollment was no longer increasing. The young and promising faculty were too often on "soft money", with no better prospect than that of a visiting assistant teaching professor. Yet if you didn't look too closely, the enterprise seemed to be sailing along. No more, and not I suppose for many years.