"There is a crisis of overproduction of PhDs and underconsumption of scholarship. To save money, schools rely increasingly on "gypsy scholars" drawn from the reserve army of unemployed PhDs. They are hired on short-term contracts to teach but are not on the tenure track and are denied health care and other benefits.Twenty years ago, 25 percent of all faculty members were part time. Today 42 percent are. For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in 1992 the California State University at Hayward had 407 tenured or tenure-track professors and 142 other lecturers, and by 1995 the numbers were 373 and 330 respectively."
-George F. Will, Labor Turbulence Goes to College
"The number of tenure track assistant professor positions is shrinking. More and more departments are employing mathematicians on one year (or even shorter term) contracts to cover department teaching responsibilities. One of the "top'' math departments has decided to cover a significant percentage of its undergraduate teaching by faculty who are not research mathematicians and who may not have a Ph.D. ... The career of an academic mathematician becomes less and less attractive as "regular'' university positions disappear. A sequence of postdoctoral positions and low paid temporary teaching positions might sustain a young enthusiastic mathematician for several years, but it is an unappealing prospect for a long term career. The "image'' of mathematics departments in the eyes of university decision makers (which is rarely as positive as it should be) will deteriorate with the reduced prestige of the teaching faculty, producing an unwelcome negative feedback. "-Susan Friedlander "The Vanishing Regular Position""When I received my PhD some 30 years ago, the situation was very different. We generally could choose among several tenure track positions upon graduation.
There was also little doubt about our job security. If our work was adequate, meaning that both the funding agencies and our students tolerated our presence, our futures fell readily into place. Moreover, the fields were not so crowded. You quickly knew everyone, the literature was manageable, and, at least in my own field, there was no shortage of important, as well as intellectually challenging research topics to choose from. None of this is true today.
We did experience periods of slow growth and no growth in the job market, notably in the late 1960's after passage of the Mansfield Amendment. But very few of us ever had to play the games of postdoc roulette or get exposed to the disease known as "adjunctivitis" that is epidemic among today's academic job seekers."
-Neal Lane, Separating Science Policy from Science Fiction, December 4, 1995