CUNY Plans to Boost Its Full-Time Faculty Ranks

Thanks to Barbara McKenna at FACE Talk for pointing out an article in The New York Sun about a hiring spree at The City University of New York. The university recently hired 40 tenure-track professors at its College of Technology as part of a push to up the ranks of full-time faculty members on the university’s 23 campuses from 50 percent to 70 percent, the Sun reports.

McKenna contacted Dorothee Benz — communications director at the Professional Staff Congress/American Federation of Teachers, which represents faculty and staff at CUNY — for comment. McKenna writes that Benz applauds CUNY’s efforts but notes that …

the gain is a far cry from where the system was in 1975 when it served considerably fewer students but employed 11,300 full-time faculty.

“The City University of New York has hired about 1,000 full-time faculty since 1999,” reports the Sun. That is solid progress, notes Benz, “but at that rate it would take 32 years to restore the full-time faculty level to what we had in ‘75.”

Addendum:
Jay Hershenson, CUNY’s senior vice chancellor for university relations, says he was delighted to see this mention of the university’s plans to hire more full-time faculty members.

He points out, however, that while the system employed 11,300 full-time faculty in 1975, it did not have fewer students then, as McKenna quoted Benz as saying. CUNY actually served slightly more students in 1975 — 250,784 — than it did in 2006 — 225,962 — when enrollment reached its highest level in 30 years.