That is exactly why I spend so much time on this site! Venting here prevents me from making my daughter crazy.
@3SailAway, depending on how youâre counting (e.g., headcount vs. FTEs), the adjunctification of the faculty has now passed 50%. 
I havenât been able to find lots of granular data on faculty makeup (with one exception: see below), but at least as of a year and a half ago Petersonâs had information on the percent of faculty that are full-time (and that are female, if thatâs important for you or your child), and College Factual had percentages of tenure-track faculty (though I donât know where they got those numbers).
Quick primer, for those who might need it here: Tenure-track faculty are assistant professors, associate professors, and professors; of those, the latter two ranks are tenured, but all have job protections that other ranks donât, and their compensation includes full benefits. (Theyâre also nearly always full-time; though there are exceptions, theyâre rare enough to be ignored for these sorts of investigations.) Instructors and visiting professors are usually but not always full-time with benefits, are generally on term-limited contracts generally of one to three years duration, and (with a few exceptions) have very little in the way of job protections. Adjunct faculty are nearly always part-time, teach on whatâs basically a piece-work (per course) basis, and have effectively no job protections and no benefits.
Basically, faculty morale is likely to be higher, and useful and lasting professional relationships between faculty and students are more likely to exist given secondarily a higher proportion of tenure-track faculty, and secondarily a higher proportion of full-time faculty. Full-time is more expensive than part-time, though, and tenure-track is both more expensive and less flexible than non-tenure-track, so as business models of management infiltrate into academia, cheaper and more flexible is being preferred more and more by many administrators.
The one exceptions to the lack of granular data I know of: The American Society for Engineering Education has breakdowns on faculty in all sorts of interesting ways (usually both by institution and by discipline), but of course thatâs only for engineering facultyâand engineering is a discipline in which adjunct faculty are often still what I think of as the âhonorableâ use of adjuncts, where itâs someone practicing in the field who can give students the benefit of experience and connections, not someone whoâs stringing together part-time teaching work to keep food in the fridge.
@dfbdfb There is certainly a difference between types of adjuncts. My D1 is in the communications school of a less than prestigious university. Several of her professors have been adjuncts who are working in her field, have pointed her towards internship opportunities and have given her truly valuable mentoring and will be immensely helpful in her eventually finding a job in the field.
@gallentjill I LOVE the notion of learning to be employable â well put.
@3SailAway @dfbdfb 40%-50% part time faculty is regrettable in my opinion as someone who did the adjunct gig for 10 years. Itâs not that those part-timers are doing a poor job. Many are earnest, hard-working, often early-career or dual-career folks, and like @gallentjill said, may have valuable professional perspective and connections. But when I was an adjunct at a UC, I was paid by the class, based on a full-time salary which by now is probably in the low $50Ks. Plus, no one is given a full-time load. Instead Iâd get at most two classes a quarter, and often just one. Iâd be making 1/3 or 1/2 of that ~$48K. Adjuncts who are supporting themselves just with teaching therefore have to teach at multiple campuses. Theyâre driving around an entire metro area. Theyâre coming onto campus just to teach the class, because they canât afford to spend all day there â in my case, Iâd try to minimize my child care costs. That means these well-meaning folks have a too-high likelihood of being chronically in a rush, generally overburdened and distracted. I did enjoy the years I spent doing it, and it kept my mind sharp when my kids were little, but they kept offering me mostly summer classes which I didnât want, and at one point I was told Iâd get an extra $10 for each student over a certain number and I thought, hmm. Ten. Dollars. Something went boink in my brain and I turned down my first class and havenât looked back.
@ninakatarina Consider being an advocate for under-resourced kids. Iâve mentored two former foster kids this year and last and itâs been really rewarding â although not easy. The elder one loved his first year of college and is starting a history conservation internship next week. And the other told me yesterday that her COA to attend her chosen school is now down to only $3000 a year after being awarded various first-gen, foster child, etc scholarships. I got tears in my eyes reading her recent text. There are so many kids out there who do not have the benefit of what all our kids have, very involved parents out there researching, etc, so they take the path of least resistance, and weâre losing a lot of potential as a result. Iâm going to ugly-cry at both these kidsâ college graduations.
@RightCoaster My brother was like your older son. He was motivated to make money from early childhood. And honestly, if thatâs your thing, then rock on â youâll have an easier life in some ways. My brother graduated from a top LAC and immediately started a business buying and selling used tech products. Heâs managed to support himself for 25 years as an entrepreneur. Interestingly, he thinks that he didnât need that liberal arts education and it was a waste.
I have a much different view. I think college is an important period of life in its own right. I recently sat down with a fellow mom who scoffed and said, âWhy would anyone send away an 18-year-old?â She said a kid of that age is far too young to be out in the world (which is a very 21st-century framing of time and maturity, but thatâs beside the point). While I agree that I would not want a kid to move alone to, say, Manhattan, the residential college experience is really not the âreal world.â Itâs a scaffolded, supported, limited environment that I think is a great transition from being a child to being a young adult. As I tell my D, itâs also (cue the stage lights! cue the touching music!) a time in your life when you can be selfishly focused on your own growth, learning, personhood, and mind. There is plenty of time later in life to work for and because of others. So yes, my D says she she may want to major in religious studies, and my husband gets raised eyebrows and sweaty palms. Whereas Iâm thinking, yes, thatâs cool. Thatâs you. Go and develop more perspective on cultures and ways of being.
Now for all my waxing on about the inherent benefit of learning and taking time for oneself, I realize thereâs a whole career at the end of all this. No one wants their kid to go to college and then live at home while playing the guitar and spending a half hour a week sending out resumes. I acknowledge that one thing I really did not do well was learn how to explore career avenues âoutside the boxâ and, of great importance, how to market myself. So I am in complete agreement with what @homerdog said that students must get into that career development center from the start, and they must do internships. I barely went into our CDO the entire time I was in college, which was a huge mistake. I needed to be in there early to cultivate my understanding of the types of things I could do. So yes, while my kids are learning and growing and discovering themselves, they do need to develop practical savvy and gradually cultivate a plan for their early careers.
Some information, such as Percent Full-time Faculty and "Full-Time Undergraduates/Full-Time faculty Ratio is collected by IPEDs.
I like to use this website to compare colleges.
http://www.â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â /search_basic.aspx
Keep in mind that these metrics follow the IPEDs definition, which is not the same as what you may find in the Common Data Set (and hence, what is used by US News in it's rankings/publications).
Percent Full-Time Faculty: The number of full-time faculty members as a percent of all faculty members. Beginning in 2013, odd yearâs data were substituted for institutions that did not provide updated data during the even year. Because collection of the faculty variable is only mandatory in the fall of every odd year, odd yearâs data were substituted for every even yearâs data in prior CRO updates. (IPEDS)
Full-Time Undergraduates / Full-Time Faculty Ratio: The number of full-time undergraduates divided by the number of full-time faculty. (IPEDS)
By the way, I find that the funding info (expenditures/FTE) is even more interesting, as it gives you a âsenseâ of the amount of resources (as $) is being allocated to each student.
The data would be under the âFunding and Facultyâ tab.
Section I of the common data set also has a breakdown of faculty into several categories, including full time and part time (but nothing on tenure vs non-tenure).
I agree with a lot of whatâs been said here about the interaction of âjob trainingâ and higher education, and whatâs valuable and whatâs not. The point that @dfbdfb raised about us not knowing what jobs are going to be important in the future (and at this point, I include â10 years from nowâ in âthe futureâ) is one of the key points raised in that Anders book @homerdog mentioned. It goes back to the old LAC selling point that what youâre really teaching people to do is learning how to think. I went to a state university and got a political science degree, which, yeah, I still use some content knowledge from, but really I learned more about reading and writing about loads of material.
Now some of the other benefits of college â learning to get along with others â I think is something that can be done anywhere, at whatever âlevelâ of college, or in the real world, but obviously some schools can provide a better environment for that learning. D19 wants to go into a STEM field, but luckily (from my perspective) itâs a more theoretical one, so that sheâs unlikely to choose a school thatâs going to be limiting to her should she realize on a cold February morning that she doesnât care enough about the subject to continue. Should that be the case, I have enough faith in the schools sheâs looking at and her own self-motivation that sheâll be able to find something that engages and gives her enough skills post-college to help her reach some level of self-sufficiency.
As others have noted here on CC, one could argue that economic anxiety (and, in the case of public universities, some retrenchment of state support) is whatâs driving this focus on âemployable skills.â If you are a parent whose tuition was a couple grand a year when you were in your stateâs flagship school (and maybe only $7-10k total for everything), finding out that tuition is now $12-$15k, and total unsubsidized COA is $30k might be a shock. All of a sudden, if youâre paying six figures for an education, I can understand why people are getting agitated. (Note: my actual political beliefs related to this whole situation are complicated and nuanced, and Iâm not planning on discussing them here, just trying to outline why I think âemployable skillsâ gets more visibility than it used to.)
And, finally, all internships are useful, even â and especially â the bad ones. Best internship I ever had was in graduate school. I spent a summer in DC, and realized that for many reasons, I had no interest in working in DC. The internship itself was fine, but learning what I didnât like was supremely valuable. I hope my own D19 takes advantage of her relative privilege in attending college full-time to do even more of that than I did.
I agree wholeheartedly about the bad internships. Figuring out what you donât want to do (or where you donât want to live) after graduation is extremely valuable. I was a co-op student at University of Waterloo and I figure the most important thing I got out of my co-ops (well, besides a full-time job with my last co-op employer) was learning what I wanted to avoid. Likewise my DS11/15 figured out through internships what kinds of jobs/companies he wanted to avoid for full-time positions.
Okay, Iâm annoyed at the educational-tutoring complex.
My D19âs school has regular semesters, and then before fall, between fall and spring, and at the end of spring they have mini-courses (called âintensivesâ), usually a quarter or half credit, depending.
At the end of junior year, most students take one called âcollege boot campâ. The useful part has been working on essays and such. Thereâs also ACT and SAT practice sessions, which are unimportant to my D19 (since sheâs already taken them and gotten scores sheâs happy with), but she took them anyway.
And then I get this in my email, titled âAnalysis of [D19]'s SAT & ACT Scoresâ:
It then goes on to pitch tutoring services, which I have no problem withâgotta make a living somehow, right?âbut why in the world imply that my D19âs list of possible colleges isnât actually âgood enoughâ?
You know why she didnât list the U of Washington? Because sheâs smart enough to know that it isnât just getting into a college, itâs paying for itâand Iowa State is affordable for us without aid beyond their guaranteed amounts for her scores, and Western Washington is with a WUE scholarship, but the U of Washington both has a high list price and doesnât participate in WUE, and therefore weâd never be able to afford it.
And that annoys meâselling people on getting into a college (if only you take the right magic tutoring), but not worrying about being able to go to a college.
@dfbdfb thatâs why my kids donât apply to colleges that we canât afford just to see if they can get in. It sets people up for family discord.
Okay, weâve rallied over here. Well, Iâve rallied. Seriously. This kid now wants a school thatâs within a two-hour radius from home with a marching/pep band, AROTC, and English/writing major. Oh, and he is not into prestige or âpreppiness.â A bunch of schools have already been ruled out due to the âpreppinessâ factor.
The bottom line is that S19 is going to have to expand the radius to three hours from home in order to have more AROTC (and marching/pep band and English/writing) options . Wish me luck on this. Proposing it will make him nervous but I need to stay the course. But there are other schools that check all the boxes. There is one school in particular that I would love for him to consider. It checks all of the boxes. I wanted him to consider it before the AROTC thing. But it was just outside the original radius and he said no. Perhaps now, he might be open to it.
And hereâs my College Planning Obsessed Parent Therapy Moment (CPOPTM). I am really attached to the non-ROTC list! We did lots of visits and narrowed it down. I was imagining him at one of the two favorite LACs. The AROTC thing means those two schools (and a few others) might no longer be in play. While we started visits back in the fall, having this additional criterion means, well, a different list of schools. And more visits. Itâs like starting all over again. I have to go through that emotional process ALL OVER AGAIN. Ahhhhhhhhh!
Figured you all might understand the CPOPTM. Mr. InfiniteWaves does not. 
@dfbdfb I agree. We are consumers of an industry. I was turned off when D looked at her March SAT scores, in the 97th and 88th percentiles, and the interface the College Board chose to use is, âYou can improve your scores!â So she sees that, internalizes it, and sure enough, sheâs taking it a second time when we have no reason to believe sheâs going to show big gains and weâre basically nibbling around the edges. I also dislike how you can send your scores to four schools included in the registration fee, but you have to designate them before youâve seen your scores. Pffft. And yep, âhigher tierâ is inappropriate in that context. I had this epiphany recently when the USNWR ârankingsâ for HIGH SCHOOLS came out recently and our district was bragging about some of our schools being in the top 5% or something. Some were, some werenât. Itâs so apparent to me that in many ways, âgoodâ schools benefit from the high socioeconomic status of the serving population, and thereâs really not an effective difference between the schools bragging about being on this list and the ones that werenât. So I realized, hmmmâŠthese almighty rankings really are their own industry. I knew they need to be taken with a grain of salt and basically considered only for global context and not in a granular fashion, but seeing the results at the high school level really made me feel like the whole scene is so sketchy.
@InfiniteWaves Aaaah hard to let the kids really be in the driverâs seat sometimes. Glad your S19 is gaining a better sense of what he wants, even if the shifting can be emotionally difficult for Mom ;). My main struggle with D19 is that she can be very passive in this whole process. Doesnât research schools on her own, doesnât read mailers, emails, etc. So I have to do a nuanced read of her reactions. When I recently drew up an itinerary for our college tours in the midwest this summer, her face was so flat. So it was one of those moments of, âOk, whatâsâŠwrong?â She wouldnât come right out and say she wanted to visit her dreamy reach school, but I read between the lines, changed the itinerary, and now sheâs perkier about it all. This means Iâm afraid of how the big decision is all going to play outâŠshe will behave like that, DH will look at the bottom line and get out spreadsheets and do a lot of frowning, Iâll have a much more follow-your-heart credo, and just for added fun, my mother in law will no doubt pipe in with her predictable 1990s-era beliefs about schools. Iâm already buckling up, and holding out hope that the decision somehow both makes itself and is a super peaceful one that everybody is happy withâŠha.
@InfiniteWaves I get you. Between DDâs changes of heart on distance, colleges, and majors, itâs hard to shift gears. I start really getting into something and researching it and then itâs on to a new idea.
@dfbdfb Thatâs crummy to discount your daughterâs choices. At least you know better than to fall for it. Affordability is one of our top concerns. I cringed yesterday when I heard a radio ad for Discover Student Loans that went something like this (very paraphrased!):
Son: What are you doing Dad?
Dad: Cramming to figure out how to pay for college.
Son: Dad, Discover Student Loans are really easy to get, you donât have to worry.
Dad: Oh, okay great!
Problem solved 8-|
Itâs the first day of summer vacation for S19 and Iâm trying to hold myself back from talking about colleges and visits. He ended up with fantastic grades in all of his classes (6 IB classes plus AP physics) so Iâm very proud of him. I guess Iâll give him a break. Heâs already left the room when I was trying to talk him into some possible camps/tournaments for his fall sport. Itâs always hard to tell if he really doesnât want to do something or if he just doesnât want me to spend any money and itâs usually the latter.
I enjoyed hearing all of your thoughts about college majors and career planning. Good things to think about!
@bjscheel, that loan advertisement is one of those times I wish CC had a Facebook-style [face with wide shocked eyes] reaction.
@SDCounty3Mom Iâve considered myself the administrative assistant to Sâs college search. We talk about criteria. Then I âpullâ schools he might be interested in. We talk about them. He looks at the websites. Then I register for visits.
Because he (originally) wanted to stay within two hours of home and we are in central PA, there are a lot of schools. And why not visit if they are less than two hours away. Iâve scheduled, cancelled, and rescheduled a lot of visits! LOL!
On a good note, S19 and I had a good talk this afternoon. He is willing to expand the radius so that he can consider more schools that check the original boxes plus AROTC. He doesnât even remember me recommending the two just-beyond-radius schools I really wanted him to consider pre-ARTOC. Both have AROTC as it turns out. And now he is all for 'em! So New York schools, here we come!
Now I am wondering if we started visits too early as we are now jamming a bunch in over the summer before senior year anyway. 8-|
@InfiniteWaves Oh man central Pennsylvania is a great location for density of schools! Iâm jealousâŠout west we just donât have that. And I like the term âcuratorâ for our Mom roles in this college search process. 
I agree that it is possible to start tours too early. I took D19 to a couple of early tours before she finished her sophomore year and they were basically just to put the conceptual understanding in her head and not really valuable for college selection. And back in the day when I was a teen I went on I think literally all of the tours my brother, three years ahead, went on, and it was all a clueless blur for meâŠ
@SDCounty3Mom Iâm totally going with âcurator.â :))
Today was the last day for seniors at our school. DS19 is officially a rising senior. :((
Didnât have a chance to read through all 559 pages (yikes!) but as a parent of a graduating h.s. senior and current junior, living in CT Iâve seen plenty of schools spoken about here. My junior wants to run track and while she could run D2 or low level D1 with her numbers, âI donât want to be owned dad!â, so D3 it is. She has visited Brandeis, Wheaton, Dickinson (2x), Gettysburg, Franklin and Marshall, Smith, Mt. HolyokeâŠand other small LAC. At coaches invite, this past spring she has done overnights at Wheaton and Dickinson. She thought it would be Wheaton until the overnight where she was offered booze and isntâ her thing (sheâs a young 16yo) so thatâs now out. She loved Dickinson and the team atmosphere; said she attended 3 classes and actually volunteered some answers. She likes the roads in the center of town going thru the campus as it makes the school feel like part of the town. The coaches really like her and offered to do an âearly readâ (as did Wheaton and Gettysburg). We both checked out Gettysburg while out that way and found it a bit more stuffy feeling than Dickinsonâs more laid back almost Smith College bohemian type feel. Anyone ever hear of this early read business and gone thru the process? Plan to pursue this summer. Thanks!
@chipperd The athletic recruit subforum is a wealth of information. I went through the D3 preread process with my S17. S17 submitted his transcript, test scores, and school profile July 1st between junior and senior year. My S17 was informed by the coach about a week later (I think) that admissions had given the âgreen light.â He then submitted his official application a couple of days after the Common Application opened up. Since he only submitted that one application, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when he received his official acceptance when ED results were released in December.
Good luck on the recruiting journey!