by our College Data Analytics TeamGet a feel for student life at NIU by checking out the information on classes and faculty below.
Northern Illinois University , with 13 students for every instructional faculty member, has more professors per student than the national average, which is 15 students for every one instructor. This student to faculty ratio is one of the standard metrics used to gauge the number of teaching resources a school provides for its students, and therefore, the individualized attention or quality of instruction the student might receive.
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 Northern Illinois University as primarily performing research or public service.
| Total | Full Time | Part Time | Percent Full Time | |
| Total of Instructional Employees | 1,035 | 787 | 248 | 76.0% |
| Total of Those With Faculty Status | 1,030 | 787 | 243 | 76.4% |
| Tenured Faculty | 447 | 447 | - | 100.0% |
| On Tenure Track | 141 | 141 | - | 100.0% |
| Not on Tenure Track | 442 | 199 | 243 | 45.0% |
| Without Faculty Status | 5 | - | 5 | - |
| Graduate Assistants | 641 | - | 641 | - |
Northern Illinois University's utilization of full-time teaching staff ranks among the highest in the nation, with 76.0% of instructors employed full time.
At Northern Illinois University , only 24.0% of the teaching staff are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is far below the national average of 51.4%, which could be indicative of Northern Illinois University'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.
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.
Northern Illinois University has 641 instructional graduate assistants that teach or provide teaching-related duties. These responsibilities could range from entirely teaching lower-level courses themselves, to assisting professors by developing teaching materials, preparing or giving exams and grading student work. We suggest you ask the college to what extent graduate assistants are relied on for instruction, so you know what you are paying for.
Additionally, the school has 383 non-instructional graduate assistants.
