14th Apr 2008

Sidestepping that darn adjunct issue

If you’re anywhere near Academia, you’ve probably seen a shift away from creating tenure-track positions toward hiring tons and tons of part-time faculty as adjuncts. This is a parallel trend to what goes on in my businesses (and we do know that universities are increasing using a corporate model for management) of hiring “temporary workers” who essentially aren’t that temporary. They could be employed in the same position or even promoted within the company for years.

Looking the other way? Accreditation practices and part-time faculty explores the issue of accrediting institutions ignoring the adjunct phenomenon when they could essentially step up, condemn the practice, and flex a little muscle as most universities do answer in some fashion to accrediting institutions:

As used by some college and university administrations today, the term “part-time faculty” is a misnomer. A large percentage of those designated part-time are actually full-time faculty with part-time pay and few or no benefits. In its glossary definitions of “faculty,” however, the Western senior commission adds an instructive caveat: “Part-time or adjunct faculty [are those] whose major responsibility is not related to the institution in question. These faculty are customarily assigned one or two classes with class-related responsibilities only.” The definition used by the Northwest commission is nearly as limiting and also includes the phrase “one or two classes.”5 While we have no evidence that accreditors tally the number of courses taught by individual adjuncts, institutions that regularly employ part-time faculty to teach three or more courses clearly practice outside accepted standards for the Western senior and Northwest commissions.

My neighbor is considered part-time faculty at a local college. She teaches six classes plus labs. That pretty much sums up that part-time misnomer. 

Via Inside Higher Ed

This entry was posted by Ms. Theologian on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 9:28 am and is filed under news You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Sidestepping that darn adjunct issue”

  1. April 14th, 2008 at 10:19 am h sofia Says:

    For more on this subject: Stentor Danielson at Debitage just wrote about tenure reform a few days ago, in response to this post at Cogitamus.

  2. April 14th, 2008 at 3:53 pm Ms. Theologian Says:

    Thanks!

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