The Rise of 'Shadow Faculty'
- lindathelibrarian
- May 3
- 1 min read
Walter Hudson, May 1, 2026 from The EDULedger
Between 2012 and 2024, the number of faculty represented by unions at private colleges and universities increased by 56 percent. For graduate student workers, the growth has been even more explosive, with a 133 percent increase over the same period...
...Long before St. John's University decided to dismantle its faculty union, American higher education had already undergone a seismic structural shift in who teaches. Since the 1970s, the share of faculty off the tenure track has risen relentlessly. Today, full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty make up barely a quarter of the instructional workforce. The rest — adjunct professors, lecturers, visiting instructors, and graduate teaching assistants — constitute what critics have called a shadow faculty: doing the work of the university at a fraction of the cost, with little job security, few benefits, and no meaningful path to permanence.