Over the past 10 years, the number of faculty (part-time and full-time) at public community colleges has decreased along with declining enrollments, from 397,424 faculty in fall 2013, to 321,552 faculty in fall 2022.
The decline in faculty has mostly been part-time faculty, as the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty decreased from 69.2% in 2013, to 64.6% in 2022. While the headcount of part-time faculty is approximately two-to-one compared to full-time faculty, the actual number of classes taught is closer to one-to-one. (There is no recent reliable source but based on data from the 2004 National Study on Postsecondary Faculty, the ratio of classes taught was roughly 50% full-time and 50% part-time faculty in public community colleges.)
In fall 2022, women comprised 55.2% of full-time faculty but only 54.9% of part-time faculty.
Adjunct faculty at community colleges have become more diverse over the years but remain much less diverse than the students they teach. As shown below, the percentage of part-time faculty who were minority increased from 19.5% in 2015, to 23.5% in 2022. In fall 2022, public community college enrollment consisted of 46.0% students of color, compared to 23.5% of part-time faculty who were minority faculty.
The largest gap was between enrollment/part-time faculty was the percent of Hispanic students (26.7% of student) and part-time Hispanic faculty (8.5% of part-time faculty). Black part-time faculty were more likely to be female (62.6%) than other part-faculty, while Hispanic part-time faculty (52.3%) and White part-time faculty (54.1%) had a smaller percentage of females than other groups of part-time faculty (approximately 57% female).
