Wednesday, March 7, 2012

College Writing Instruction

Question: Who teaches freshman composition in college?

Answer/Quote: “The most recent statistics from the Modern Language Association (MLA) reveal that 2010, 60% to 80% of all English courses were taught by contingent faculty…. For first-year writing, the labor demographics are even more imbalanced. A 2007 Associated Departments of English (ADE) staffing survey indicates that 80.8% of all first-year writing courses offered in public institutions were taught by teaching assistants (29.5%), part-time (33.3%), or full-time, non-tenure-track faculty (28.0%)….. In terms of faculty gender, 2003-4—the latest years charted for this information—the ADE found that 66.7% of all part-time faculty in English were women…. These statistics illustrate what readers already know: the first-year college writing is taught, by and large, by contingent labor, the majority of whom are women.” P. 388.

Comment: These are the statistics. What do they mean? RayS.

Title: “ ‘Ladies Who Don’t Know Us Correct Our Papers’: Postwar Lay Reader Programs and Twenty-first Century Contingent Labor in First-Year Writing.” Kelly Ritter. College Composition and Communication (February 2012), 387-419.

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