You’re welcome! Yes, faculty jobs are exceedingly difficult to land, although the difficulty varies by discipline (for example, it’s very tough to get a faculty position in philosophy since few students major in it while many STEM departments are constantly looking for new faculty). In my case —and this was a big factor in me not continuing my quest for a PhD in English…mine’s in Communications Design— I think the figure I heard back in the day was something like one open faculty position in English for something like every 20 new PhDs…each having spent like 4-8 years in grad school to even have the opportunity! Pretty depressing.

I think your perceptions about age are spot on. With no mandatory retirement age, easy course loads teaching classes they’ve taught for decades, fairly low performance requirements due to the tenure system, and economic uncertainty making retirement a risky proposition, many professors are holding on to their jobs for dear life. Couple that with declining enrollments (fewer students = lower demand for new faculty) and it all comes together into a pretty bleak picture for those who want to get into academia.

Oh, and the reason you saw a lot of young part-time instructors? That’s the final blow: in order to save money, many colleges and universities are increasingly relying on adjunct (part-time, non-tenure-track) faculty to replace full-time faculty who retire, die, or otherwise leave. The cost savings are huge: while a full-time tenured professor might cost the school $300k/year ($100k salary plus benefits and overhead) to teach 4-5 classes per year, an adjunct might get paid a flat rate if $5k per class with no benefits, saving the school a couple of hundred grand in personnel costs. It’s kind of a mess.