If you're an average full-time faculty member, you're probably white, male, tenured and working at the peak of your powers. You came into the profession during the boom years when state and federal dollars were flowing into higher education, and expansion was the order of the day.

In fact, because of the luck of timing, you've had the opportunity to help shape the enterprise into the world-class system it is today. You're satisfied with the work you do, and if you had it to do over, you would do things the same way. At least, this is what 75 percent of faculty reported in "The American College Teacher," a national faculty survey conducted every three years by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute.

Nonetheless, all around you, changes are under way that sometimes make it hard to focus on what drew you to the profession in the first place--the life of inquiry, your passion for teaching. Students are coming in less prepared, less willing to work hard; and their expectations aren't quite aligned with yours. Pressed by the legislature, governor, trustees (choose one or all), your administration is looking for workload increases and greater "accountability" in the form of more time-consuming evaluation procedures or post-tenure review. And the rapid proliferation of technology applications on your campus is both a boon and a cause of stress.

Truth be told, it's something of a relief that you've already turned the corner on 55 and are giving some thought to retirement. And, with those same legislators looking to save a few dollars and your union working on your behalf, you've seen some pretty interesting early-retirement buy-out offers come down the pike. Of course, you're not ready to retire yet, but when you are....people like Jeremy Elkins, Karrie Zylstra, Kalvin Harvell, Emily Tai and Jeff Bookwalter are among those primed and ready to pick up the ball.

These college teachers range in age from the mid-20s to just under 40. They are part of a group that could have as much of an impact on higher education as the group that shaped the academy during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Except for Elkins, who has been a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for the past 10 years, they fall into a category the U.S. Department of Education defines and counts as "new entrants"--people who have been working in higher education for seven years or under. Like the cohort that is 55 and older, they make up about one-third of all full-time faculty.

Observers of higher education are particularly interested in this group of younger faculty for several reasons. One, there are so many of them. "New Entrants to the Full-time Faculty of Higher Education Institutions," published last fall by the National Center for Education Statistics, presents data collected in 1992-93 for the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF-93). (This is the most recent year for which data are available; NSOPF-99 is currently under way.) NCES counted a total of 514,976 full-time faculty, with 172,319 of them qualifying as new hires. Although the "New Entrants" report alludes to part-time faculty in a footnote, stating a count of 435,735, it does not include that data in the full report analysis; a separate report is due out this summer.

One of the most highlighted findings in "New Entrants" is that the hiring of new full-time faculty has not been stagnant over the years, as is popularly believed. As new people have come in, the profile of the "average" faculty member has begun to transmogrify. Although women make up 28 percent of the senior faculty, they account for 41 percent of the new wave. Minorities are trickling in as well; they make up 11.7 percent of the senior faculty, but nearly 17 percent of the new entrants are minorities.

Another reason this younger group holds interest is because it already has acquired a label. It is called "the bridge generation." Unfortunately, the bridge is not a stairway to heaven; it could instead be a footpath that leads both to reduced circumstances and a transformation of traditional ideals.

In Gone for Good: Tales of University Life After the Golden Age (Oxford University Press, 1999), Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer develops the premise that the soon-to-retire group of senior faculty experienced years of bounty, expansion and opportunity that will never be seen again. His view of the future is rather bleak for public university systems, which he believes will bear the brunt of changing market conditions. Private universities like his own, he says, will be able to defend the ramparts of traditional liberal learning through their independent resources.

The "bridge" generation of faculty are the ones who will contend with:

• Technological transformation--distance education, online instruction, distinctions between "content providers" and those who "deliver instruction," and so on.
• Increasing use of temporary and part-time labor--what will life in the academy be like should tenure evaporate?
• States' disinclination to invest adequately in education and training at a time when the population is exploding again and becoming more diverse through immigration and natural birth rates.
• A booming business in the proprietary sector--with companies like the Apollo Group (parent of the University of Phoenix) and Sylvan Learning Systems beginning to share their corner on the training market with privatized programs within public university systems.

It is a future quite a bit different from what today's senior faculty beheld when they were in the shoes of their younger colleagues. In fact, for some of the younger faculty AFT On Campus interviewed for this story, it's a future they didn't really consider as they were pursuing their advanced degrees.

Jeff Bookwalter is 31 years old and several years beyond having received his doctorate in economics from the University of Utah. Now, after completing a one-year visiting professorship at the University of Montana School of Economics, he is relieved to have been offered an extension--a three-year visiting contract there. Bookwalter is hoping that a department retirement during the next three years might open up a tenure line for which he can apply. Otherwise, he's out in 2003.

Bookwalter, a member of the UM University Teachers Union/AFT, is rueful about the direction higher education is taking, where committed academics like himself end up with temporary jobs, large classes and course loads so heavy that doing research is very difficult. He also wonders if the changes that distance education will bring to university life will be positive in the long run.

"I don't think a lot of my grad student colleagues had any sense of that change," he says. "We got into this because we saw "golden age" faculty and the work life they had carved for themselves. They did fascinating, stimulating research. They taught small classes with us--interested, engaged students. We looked at that and said, "I want to do that."

"By the time you figure out that it isn't going to happen, you're five years into a graduate program, and there is no going back. You find it is a changed world. The rapidity of the change is frightening.

"If I'm here for 35 years," he adds, "the story of my academic career will be different from those of the people who were my models."

Emily Tai received her doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1996. She came back that year as an adjunct to the City University of New York, where she had done her undergraduate work. The following year, she took a full-time position at Queensborough Community College of CUNY and hopes for tenure there someday.

Tai acknowledges some of the uncertainties plaguing those starting out in the academic profession these days, but she can't see herself doing anything other than what she is doing. Tai describes her work in the field of Western Medieval History as a "love affair with the subject and with the process of studying." She also clearly embraces the challenges of working with a diverse, urban constituency that comes to class with varied skill levels. She belongs to the Professional Staff Congress/AFT.

Tai is generally upbeat about what the future holds. Interestingly, she and Kalvin D. Harvell, a sociology instructor in his second year of teaching at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich., express a clear satisfaction with their work that lays to rest any fears about the future. Their attitudes reflect a broad finding of the "New Entrants" study: Of faculty at all types of institutions, those at public, two-year colleges are the most satisfied with their career choices and the work they do.

"I feel I can do my best, can fulfill my greatest purpose at a community college," says Harvell. At 24, he relishes the opportunity to connect with students not very different from himself and to empower them in the same way that he believes education has empowered him.

Harvell, who is a member of the Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers, grew up in Flint, Mich. He had career plans to be a rap star until, as a high school senior, he started getting acceptance letters from community colleges he had never applied to. He laughed at the mistakes until he learned that his mother, who had struggled to put herself through a two-year program after she married, had secretly applied for him. She told him that college wouldn't hurt his rap aspirations. She just wanted him "to rap geometry, philosophy and Shakespeare."

Karrie Zylstra is an English-as-a-Second-Language instructor who has taught for four years at Bates Technical College in Washington state. She is also a new mother with a 3-month-old who has just returned to work after a 12-week maternity leave. After receiving her bachelor's degree in 1994, she taught part-time at Bates and was active in her union, the Washington Federation of Teachers. This year, she finally secured a full-time contract. While appreciative of the benefits, she's received, Zylstra is re-evaluating her ability to support herself and her son on a community college teacher's salary. "My frustration with teaching is that it doesn't pay enough," she says. "This is something that I want to do--to model [for her son] something that is important for society. But I want to support him too," she adds.

When you ask Jeremy Elkins (who is pictured on the cover) if he ever thinks about the future of higher education in the context of his work as a nontenured lecturer in legal studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, his answer is surprising. "It's something I think about every day."

He thinks about it when he sees the resources the university puts into distance learning, not into teaching. He feels it when lecturers are excluded from playing any role in the academic senate, including working on curriculum issues, despite the fact that lecturers teach 40 percent of the students. "It's hard to communicate the level of insult you get every day," he says.

Elkins, who is 38, has a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley School of Law. When the opportunity to teach at Santa Cruz came up in his last year of law school, his professors warned him to do it only for a year. Instead he found himself teaching full-time and writing his dissertation, which he completed in 1995, over the next six years. Elkins, who is also the northern vice president and legislative chair for the University Council/AFT, has been teaching on three-year renewable contracts for 10 years now.

Decrying the "have and have-not" tiers in the professoriate nationwide, Elkins notes that lecturers--nontenured, permanent temporaries--have no rights, even though the universities rely upon these instructors. In the UC system, it would be worse without the union, he says. Still, he will not be a lecturer for another 10 years, nor even for five, he vows. "I did not come into academia for this!"

For Bookwalter, the economist at the University of Montana, the implications of a have and have-not academic work force are plain. "I don't want to be part of the creation of a permanent underclass of teaching faculty. It scares me to death. A lot is on the shoulders of faculty teaching more and larger classes. It is a disservice to everyone."