Sound Familiar?

Colleges' enrollments have risen dramatically in the past 20 years, so it's not surprising -- and arguably is even appropriate -- that the size of their staffs has grown, too. But the rate of growth has come among support staff employees rather than instructors and has outstripped the enrollment growth, resulting in a decline in productivity over that time, a new report asserts.

The report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, "Trends in the Higher Education Labor Force: Identifying Changes in Worker Composition and Productivity," analyzes federal employment data from postsecondary institutions showing that that higher education workforce grew by about half from 1987 to 2007, or a little over a million jobs. More than 60 percent of those jobs were in instructional staff, but the vast majority of those jobs were part time.

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