The Adirondack Community College Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

Does Adirondack Community College have a good student to faculty ratio?

Check out the information on class structures and faculty to get a feel for the academic life at Adirondack Community College.

Below Average Student to Faculty Ratio

Student to faculty ratio is one of the standard metrics used to gauge the number of teaching resources a school provides for its students. With 17 students for every one instructional faculty member, Adirondack Community College has more students split among the same faculty when compared to the national average of 15. This metric might be an indicator that larger class sizes may be the norm, especially in introductory courses.

Breakdown of Instructional Staff

The following table shows all the employees the school considers instructional, and therefore, part of the above student-to-faculty ratio. These include both those employees designated as either "primarily instructional" or as "instructional combined with research/public service". It does not include employees that have been identified by Adirondack Community College as primarily performing research or public service.

Above Average Use of Part-Time Teachers

36.0% of the teaching staff are full time at Adirondack Community College, which places this college below average in its use of full-time teachers when compared to a nationwide average.

Use of Part-Time Teachers is Above Average

64.0% of the teaching staff at Adirondack Community College are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This percentage represents a higher than average use of adjuncts when compared to the national average of 52.4%, a controversial statistic that some consider indicative of a college's commitment to building a strong, long-term instructional team.

Colleges often use part-time professors and adjuncts to teach courses, rather than full-time faculty. This hiring practice is primarily a way to save money amid increasingly tight budgets. However, it is a controversial practice with strong views on either side. We encourage you to understand this topic more deeply, and how the colleges you are interested in approach faculty hiring. It's your education and your money on the line. Make sure you know what you are getting for it.

Additional Information

• What is an Adjunct?

  On this page, we refer to an adjunct teacher or a part-time teacher interchangeably, although each school may have a slightly different definition. In short, an adjunct professor can either work full-time or part-time during a school semester, but they have no contract or a contract that lasts only a short amount of time. To come up with the numbers for this page, we use the total number of part-time non-faculty and non-tenure track faculty to represent the count of adjuncts for the college or university.

No Graduate Programs

Many U.S. colleges utilize enrolled graduate assistants to help instructional faculty, however, as Adirondack Community College does not offer graduate degree programs, this practice is not applicable to this college.