Dive Brief:
- Inside Higher Ed’s 2016 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers found provosts are worried about the future of liberal arts on their campuses and the financial health of their organizations.
- According to the annual survey, there's more openness toward the benefits of competency-based education, especially at public institutions, and doubts about the quality of MOOC-inspired programs — including much-talked-about ones at Arizona State University and MIT, though even these types of programs are being seen as a competitive threat.
- When asked about trigger warnings, only 12% of provosts agreed or strongly agreed professors should be required to use them, though three times that thought they could be useful; on tenure, two-thirds see it as important and viable to their institutions, yet 61% said they would favor a system of long-term contracts instead.
Dive Insight:
The Inside Higher Ed Survey of Chief Academic Officers is among the annual surveys the publication conducts of higher education administrators. The interest in long-term contracts over tenure is a reflection of shifting ground across the industry. The relatively recent transition to increasing reliance on non-tenured faculty, both part-time and full-time, has changed the dynamics on campuses when it comes to governance, among other things. Adjunct faculty success in unionizing, however, could swing the pendulum back the other way, as the financial benefits of non-tenured faculty decrease.
According to Inside Higher Ed’s survey, provosts believe a problem of academic integrity within big-time athletics programs is widespread across higher education, but not at their own institutions. Campus presidents have had the same response when asked about the problems of sexual assault and poor race relations.