Physics in the Two-Year Colleges

by Michael Neuschatz

Highlights

In 1996, the American Institute of Physics conducted the first comprehensive nationwide survey of physics faculty at two-year colleges (TYC's), with funding from the National Science Foundation. Information on physics programs was secured from over 99% of the nearly 1800 two-year college campuses in the US, and surveys were completed by 56% of the 2700 faculty teaching physics on these campuses in the Spring of 1996.
As Figure 1 shows, physics was offered at 1056 of these campuses, about 60% of the total. However, because the schools without physics tended to be those with small enrollments, it turns out that almost 90% of the five million two-year college students enrolled for credit had physics available on their campus.
However, only 120,000 students actually took physics at a two-year school in 1997. This constitutes about 15% of the 800,000 students who enter two-year college on a full- or part-time basis each year. Figure 2 shows the distribution of this enrollment by type of course, as described by the faculty respondents to the survey.
Department or division heads indicated that one third of their physics faculty were part-time appointees (although a disproportionate part of the actual responses to the survey came from full-time professors). Table 1 provides information on faculty demographics and teaching experience. Among the attributes depicted in the table, there are few differences between part-timers and full-timers, with the expected exception of years spent teaching. Table 2 shows the similarity in academic background of full-time and part-time physics teachers.
Unlike their colleagues in universities and four-year colleges, many physics faculty at two-year schools are expected to teach other subjects in addition to physics. Among full-time faculty, we found that almost two-thirds taught other subjects, and that for these instructors, physics constituted only about half of their teaching load on average. Figure 3 identifies the other fields that are most often included in physics instructors’ loads.
To view the most widely used textbooks in 1996, click here.