Faculty Needs and Resources in American Higher Education

Abstract

The stock of doctorates in the United States has been growing at about 6.3 percent per year over the last thirty years, but current Ph.D. output is adding to the stock—after allowance for deaths and retirements—at a nearly 9 percent rate. In light of the slow-down in the growth of research and development funding, expected to continue in the 1970s, and the likely decline in the growth of college enrollments after 1975, this rate appears higher than can be easily assimilated. After 1975, the demand for new teachers with the doctorate in higher education is likely to drop from about fifteen thousand annually to close to zero in the 1984-88 period, unless there are marked changes in customary student/staff ratios or col lege enrollment trends. A slow-down in new hiring of college teachers will tend to skew the faculty age distribution, and the median age of teachers may rise from its present age thirty- nine to age forty-eight by 1990 unless there are changes in tenure and retirement policies. These factors will create a time of stress for higher education, most acute in the 1975-85 period and most burdensome on the graduate schools and on private institutions.