We tend not to think of academia as subscribing to the corporate model of management, and I’m not sure why we don’t. Universities function as corporations and are led by CEOs who think of profit.  And one way to increase profit for a university is to decrease costs, which is often done by decreasing the number of tenure track positions. This means that the university saves on the costs associated with paying benefits and a full-time salary and gets hundreds of temporary workers (adjunct faculty) running from college to college to college to teach for a piddly amount of money. And, oddly enough, graduation rates decrease when universities hire large numbers of temporary workers.

You might want to read the Decline of the Tenure Track for more information on the corporate management practices in academia and Ms. Theologian consults academics for the experiences of one adjunct faculty member.