BSC's Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

Does Birmingham Southern College Have a Good Student to Faculty Ratio?

Get a feel for student life at BSC by checking out the information on classes and faculty below.

Importance of Faculty Composition at Birmingham Southern College

The student to faculty ratio, as well as the number of full-time vs. part-time instructors, can give you an idea of how much attention you'll receive as an individual student at BSC.

Amount of Faculty Here is About Average

Student to faculty ratio at Birmingham Southern College is on par with the national average of 14 students for every one instructional faculty member, at 13:1. This ratio is a standard metric used to gauge the number of teaching resources a school provides for its students.

Instructional Staff at the College

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 Birmingham Southern College as primarily performing research or public service.

Below Average Use of Part-Timers

Birmingham Southern College makes above average use of full-time teachers, with 69.0% of instructors teaching full time.

Below Average Reliance on Part-Time Teachers

At Birmingham Southern College, only 31.0% of the teaching staff are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is low, below the national average of 51.0%, which could be indicative of Birmingham Southern 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? An adjunct is a teacher that has either no contract or a very short term contract for a single semester or year. These teachers often instruct only a single class or two at a given college and may have teaching or non-teaching jobs elsewhere. The term 'adjunct' can be used very loosely in academia, and many schools classify these instructors differently. To account for this difference, 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 Birmingham Southern College does not offer graduate degree programs, this practice is not applicable to this college.