Faculty, new and experienced, say the professoriate can be just as rewarding to a new generation of academics if teaching and research opportunities are opened for them.
Dr. Lorenzo Morris, chair of the political science department at Howard University, began his career in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was 25. Now after 36 years of authoring books, publishing papers and producing pertinent research, the tenured veteran of the academy still enjoys the rigors of the professoriate.
Dr. Robert Teranishi is on a similarly stellar trajectory, but he’s a rarity among younger members of the academy. The tenured 34- year-old is an associate professor of higher education at New York University. Serving as co-director for The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, Teranishi has authored several groundbreaking reports including his most recent, “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders – Facts, not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight,” and is a faculty affiliate with The Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education.
Together, these two academics are involved in a vast generational shift expected to alter the landscape of higher education over the next 10 years. As many baby boomers like Morris prepare to retire in the next decade, there aren’t enough young junior faculty members like Teranishi in the professoriate to replace them, according to a recent study by the American Council on Education.
The faculty ranks have grown older as more than 54 percent of full-time faculty members in the United States in 2005 were older than 50, compared with just 22.5 percent in 1969, according to data collected by The New York Times.
