It’s no secret that colleges and universities are relying increasingly on part-time instructors or other faculty who are neither tenured nor on track for tenure. But a flurry of recent studies draw troubling conclusions about what kind of impact that is having on the quality of a student’s education.
A study released today by the American Federation of Teachers, a faculty union, finds that these instructors — dubbed contingent faculty to reflect their limited-term appointments — are pervasive throughout public higher education. Not only do they teach many undergraduate courses, they’re also teaching “significant percentages” of classes and students across multiple disciplines.
