Marc Turner wrote:
>I would caution all of us to keep in mind the fact that your
impression of
>adjunct faculty could be a stereotype based on your particular
experience
>with adjuncts and not necessarily apply to all adjuncts. The role
and
>function of adjuncts at your institution might not be the same as
their
>role at other institutions. As such, the answer to the original
question
>about the acceptable percentage of adjunct faculty is "it depends."
I absolutely agree. Because I think I may have inadvertantly
offended some with my first two posts on this subject, I would like to
clarify my main point, based on my own experience as an adjunct, and as a
full-time faculty member at an institution that relies more and more heavily
on adjuncts to meet our increasing needs.
Overreliance on adjuncts is damaging to both full- and part-time
faculty and potentially (though not necessarily!!) to students.
1. As stated earlier, use of adjuncts in order to add more sections
of needed classes (the practice at my school) does nothing to relieve the
workload of already overworked full-time faculty, and may even increase it
(already mentioned in another post so I won't elaborate).
2. Adjuncts are often paid at a relatively low rate for the amount
of work they must put into a class. At best this is insulting, at worst
it's exploitation.
3. At my school, heavy reliance on adjuncts means that students can
take a majority of their psych classes without having a full-time faculty
member. Even if the students are getting an exemplary education, this is
not consistent with the spiel our college promotes.
4. Because adjuncts seem to come and go, and have other
committments, at our school it is impractical to try to get them involved in
things like curriculum planning, etc.
Kris Lewis
