CARACTÉRISTIQUES OF ACCOUNTING FACULTY AT TWO-YEAR COLLEGES

II. CARACTÉRISTIQUES OF ACCOUNTING FACULTY
AT TWO-YEAR COLLEGES
Faculty who teach accounting at two-year institutions are mostly part-time, increasingly female,
Caucasian, married with children, hold master’s degrees or less, and are often teaching in
a field in which they have not earned their highest degree. They also tend to be otherwise employed
and have multiple sources of income.
Gender. In 1993, roughly 70% of community college accounting faculty were males (Table 6). By
2004, there were about 1400 fewer male accounting faculty, but about 500 more females. The
proportion of males had dropped to 58%.
Perhaps more interesting, the genders differed in their employment pattern; males were much
more likely to be part-time by 2004. In fact, there were only about half as many full-time male
accounting faculty in 2004 as in 1993. Women, on the other hand, were almost twice as likely to
be full-time in 2004 as in 1993 (Table 7).
Ethnicity. Accounting faculty in two-year institutions were overwhelmingly White, and remained
so between 1993 and 2004 (Table 8). There was an uptick in the percentage of those identifying
themselves as Black, and a decline in those identifying as Hispanic. Whites constituted about
85% of all accounting faculty at two-year institutions in 2004, Blacks constituted 10.6% (more
than double their proportion in 1993), Hispanics declined from 5.3% to 1.0%, and Asian/Pacific
TABLE 7
Part- and Full-Time Status of Community College Accounting Faculty
by Gender, 1993–2004
Percent Percent
Change in Change in
1993 2004 Part-Time 1993 2004 Full-Time
Part-Time Part-Time Faculty Full-Time Full-Time Faculty
Male 3551 2968 –16.4% 1749 932 –46.7%
Female 1594 1459 –8.5% 706 1341 +89.9%
TABLE 6
Gender of Community College Accounting Faculty, 1993–2004
1993 2004 Percent Change
Male 5300 3900 –26.4%
Female 2300 2800 +21.7%
Total 7600 6700 –11.8%
Percent male 69.7% 58.2%
TABLE 8
Race/Ethnicity of Accounting Faculty in Two-Year Institutions (percentages), 1993–2004
Asian/ American Indian/
White Black Hispanic Pacific Islander Alaska Native
1993 85.6% 4.3% 5.3% 3.3% 1.6%
2004 85.2% 10.6% 1.0% 3.2% 0%
Accounting in Community Colleges: Who Teaches, Who Studies? Leslie
16 American Accounting Association
Islanders constituted 3.2%. American Indian/Alaska Natives declined from 1.6% to 0. Accounting
faculty in two-year institutions are distributed roughly in proportion to their ethnic distribution
at four-year institutions.
Age. Figure 2 shows that the age distribution of accounting faculty at two-year institutions shifted
upward, consistent with indicators of aging found in earlier studies in this series.
The shift was particularly apparent among part-time faculty, with a sharp decline in faculty
between the ages of 40 and 50, and a tripling of those over the age of 55, as shown in Figure 3.
The age distribution of full-timers shifted upward, but mainly with respect to the mode
(Figure 4); overall, the mean age of part-timers was three years lower than that of full-timers in
1993, but a year higher in 2004 (Table 9).
The principal finding in this section is aging among male accounting faculty. Nearly 45%
were 55 or older in 2004, while only 16% were 44 or younger. Among females, 17% were 55 or
older, while 43% were 44 or younger. Figure 5 illustrates the disproportionately older distribution
of males and younger distribution of females. About 41% of males report planning to retire
“from all paid employment” within 10 years of the survey. An increasing number of women are
teaching accounting in two-year institutions, not just as part-timers, but increasingly in full-time
TABLE 9
Mean Age of Accounting Faculty in Two-Year Institutions, 1993–2004
Mean Age, 1993 Mean Age, 2004
Part-time 45.53 51.67
Full-time 48.95 50.82
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
0 to 30
31 to 35
36 to 40
41 to 45
46 to 50
51 to 55
56 to 60
> 60
Age in years.
Number of faculty in interval
Total, 1993
Total, 2004
FIGURE 2
Age Distribution of Accounting Faculty in Two-Year Institutions, 1993–2004
Accounting in Community Colleges: Who Teaches, Who Studies? Leslie
American Accounting Association 17
FIGURE 3
Age Distribution of Part-Time Community College Accounting Faculty, 1993–2004
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
0 to 30
31 to 35
36 to 40
41 to 45
46 to 50
51 to 55
56 to 60
> 60
Age in years.
Number of faculty in interval
Part‐time, 1993
Part‐time, 2004
FIGURE 4
Age Distribution of Full-Time Accounting Faculty at Two-Year Institutions, 1993–2004
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
0 to 30
31 to 35
36 to 40
41 to 45
46 to 50
51 to 55
56 to 60
> 60
Age in years
Number of faculty in interval
Full‐time, 1993
Full‐time, 2004
positions. There were 22% more women teaching accounting at two-year institutions in 2004
than in 1993, but about 16% fewer women teaching accounting at four-year institutions in 2004
than in 1993.
Accounting in Community Colleges: Who Teaches, Who Studies? Leslie
18 American Accounting Association
Other Employment. Most part-time accounting faculty at two-year institutions have other employment,
as does an apparently declining proportion of full-time faculty. Table 10 shows, however,
that a substantial shift took place between 1993 and 2004. An increased proportion of both
part- and full-time faculty reported that their teaching job was their only job. Consistent with
this trend, many fewer part-timers reported holding other full-time jobs in 2004 than reported
doing so in 1993. Table 11 shows that although over 84% held other full-time jobs in 1993, fewer
than half did so in 2004.
Sources of Income. Accounting faculty at two-year institutions earn substantially less, on the
whole, than do accounting faculty at four-year institutions. In 2004, full-time accounting faculty
TABLE 10
Percentage of Accounting Faculty at Two-Year Institutions Reporting “Other Employment”
than their Teaching Job, 1993–2004
1993 2004
Part-time 88.60% 72.70%
Full-time 34.50% 21.10%
Total 71.10% 55.20%
TABLE 11
Full- or Part-Time Status of Other Jobs Held by Part-Time Accounting Faculty
in Two-Year Institutions, 1993–2004
1993 2004
Other job part-time 15.8% 52.2%
Other job full-time 84.2% 47.8%
FIGURE 5
Age Distribution of Accounting Faculty in Two-Year Institutions by Gender, 2004
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0 to 30
31 to 34
35 to 39
40 to 44
45 to 49
50 to 54
55 to 59
> 60 Age in years
Percent of respondents in interval
Male
Female
Accounting in Community Colleges: Who Teaches, Who Studies? Leslie
American Accounting Association 19
at two-year institutions averaged $53,622.80 in basic salary from their employing institutions
(Table 12). Full-time accounting faculty at four-year institutions averaged $83,011.20 in the same
year. Part-time accounting faculty at two-year institutions averaged $8,157.40 in basic salary, while
part-timers at four-year institutions averaged $11,973.90. In rough terms then, two-year accounting
faculty make about two-thirds the basic salary made by four-year accounting faculty.
Part- and full time faculty look more alike in income when all sources are included in the
analysis. Table 13 shows that part-timers actually earned slightly more in total income than fulltimers
in 1993, but they had lost considerable ground (measured in constant dollars), both absolutely
(–18%) and relatively to full-timers by 2004. These trends are likely affected by the substantial
drop in percentage of part-time faculty holding other full-time jobs (Table 11), which, for
most, would presumably be their main source of income.