Externalizing employment in higher education: determinants of contingent academic employment in institutions of higher education

Abstract

The growth of part-time and off tenure track full time faculty employment since 1970s has been paralleled by the increasing literature on the subject. Many of the studies remained descriptive in nature and focused on the characteristics of the contingent employees. The present study contributes to a small body of literature that searches for the organizational and environmental driving factors that bring contingent employment to life. Specifically, it asks the question: which organizational and environmental factors explain the inter-organizational variation in the proportion of part-time and off tenure track full time faculty in the institutions of higher education? The findings suggest that employment of part-time faculty is driven by such financial factors as educational revenues and the savings on benefits. None of the hypothesized determinants of the off tenure track full time faculty employment have been empirically confirmed, suggesting that this type of employment is likely to follow the logic of the traditional tenure track faculty employment.