In these budget-trimming times, the math is compelling. The university gains the flexibility to meet last-minute needs. This reflects a national pattern. Ads in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education list 37 tenure-track positions and 55 temporary appointments. Malcolm Hill, the associate dean of N.U.'s College of Arts and Sciences, who fields departments' pleas for more teachers, notes the obvious.
Financial interests favor fewer tenured faculty.
They cut in on things you'd like to do with the money. Finding qualified profs is certainly easy these days, with platoons of hopeful scholars to choose from. The toughest competition for academic jobs comes in the liberal arts, where humanities PhDs flood the market. And Boston is a magnet city. Tenured profs from the hinterlands have jumped at the chance to become junior faculty on Huntington Avenue.