Tenure-track faculty at U.S. colleges jumped 7% in the 2025-26 academic year — the largest single-year increase in a decade, according to new CUPA-HR data covering 936 institutions. For students choosing a school right now, more tenure-track professors generally means more stability, stronger research mentorship, and faculty with a long-term stake in your success.

For years, the story in American higher education was a slow drift away from full-time, job-secure faculty. Adjuncts and non-tenure-track instructors were doing more of the teaching while permanent positions shrank. New data suggests that trend may be reversing — at least for now.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) released its 2025-26 workforce report this week, and one number stood out: tenure-track faculty grew 7% year over year, the biggest jump in at least a decade. It was also the first year in ten where tenure-track growth outpaced non-tenure-track growth.1

The survey covers 280,128 full-time faculty members across 936-plus institutions, including 171,283 in tenure-track positions.

Why Faculty Type Matters for Students

The distinction between tenure-track and non-tenure-track professors is not just an HR category. It has real effects on what you get as a student.

Tenure-track faculty have job security that lets them invest in students over time. They advise on research projects, write letters of recommendation from genuine institutional knowledge, and stay around long enough to know whether you struggled in your first year and found your footing in your third. An adjunct hired semester-to-semester may be an excellent teacher but is rarely in a position to build that kind of continuity.

There is also a research access angle. At research universities especially, tenure-track faculty run labs, pursue grants, and publish — which means undergraduates who want hands-on research experience have someone to work with in a sustained way. Non-tenure-track instructors are typically hired to teach specific credit hours, not to maintain research programs.

This is not a verdict on adjuncts. The Chronicle of Higher Education has covered research showing part-time faculty can outperform tenure-track professors in introductory undergraduate courses at some institutions.2 The difference tends to show up more in the longer arc of a student's academic career — access to mentorship, research, and professional connections.

Why Numbers Fell Before They Rose

The 7% rebound makes more sense when you understand what preceded it. Tenure-track faculty headcount fell in four of the six years following the pandemic. Hiring freezes, college budget cuts, and anxiety about the looming enrollment cliff made administrators reluctant to create permanent faculty lines that are expensive and hard to wind down if enrollment drops.

The CUPA-HR data shows non-tenure-track growth also slowed in 2025-26, from 3.6% to 2.1%. That shift, combined with the tenure-track surge, suggests at least some institutions chose to invest in stability rather than continuing to patch gaps with contingent instructors.

When you research a school, look up its student-to-faculty ratio — but go one step further and find its Common Data Set (published annually on the institution's financial aid or institutional research page). Section I breaks out full-time versus part-time faculty. A 10:1 ratio looks different if 40% of those faculty are part-time adjuncts.

The Catch in the Data

The 7% headcount gain came with a notable downside: tenure-track faculty received a median pay increase of just 1.8% in 2025-26, the lowest raise of any employee category tracked by CUPA-HR. That gap matters for the long run. If institutions are hiring into tenure-track lines but underpaying them, the quality and retention of those hires may not match the headline number.

A 7% increase in tenure-track hiring is a single year of data, not a confirmed trend. The number had fallen in four of the prior six years. Watch the next CUPA-HR annual report — due in late summer 2027 — before concluding that the decades-long shift toward contingent faculty has reversed.

How to Use This When Choosing a School

Faculty composition is a legitimate factor to weigh alongside cost, location, and academic programs. The question is not just how many faculty a school has, but what kind.

Start with the Common Data Set for any school you are seriously considering — how to read college rankings covers where to find it. Section I shows full-time versus part-time faculty breakdowns. You can also look at how to choose a college with faculty quality as one of your filters alongside outcomes data.

For students deciding between a small college and a large university, faculty type often breaks differently by institution size. Smaller liberal arts colleges typically run almost entirely on tenure-track lines. Large research universities carry a wider mix — more adjuncts and lecturers alongside the tenured faculty running graduate programs.

Faculty composition also shows up in any honest look at whether college is worth it. Mentorship and research access are part of what you are paying for; checking who actually delivers those things at a given school is basic due diligence.

The faculty brain drain concerns that surfaced in 2025 and 2026 add another layer: even institutions that hire tenure-track faculty face pressure on retention. More hiring is a positive signal. Whether it sticks depends on compensation and institutional stability — both worth asking about directly on any campus visit.

Footnotes

  1. CUPA-HR. (2026). 2025-26 Higher Education Workforce Report. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. https://www.cupahr.org/research-data/about-our-surveys/faculty-survey/ ↩

  2. Nietzel, M. T. (2026, August 20). National survey finds surprising growth in tenure-track college faculty. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/08/20/national-survey-finds-surprising-growth-in-tenure-track-college-faculty/ ↩ ↩2