This chapter explores how contingent faculty address the issue of work and family and demonstrates the importance of understanding the diversity of contingent faculty experiences and of underemployment rather than notions of the ideal worker to explain their work lives.

A history of the professoriate would not be complete without an account of nontenure-track faculty. Whether these faculty members are referenced using the terms "contingent," "part time," "contract," "adjunct," "clinical," "research," "visiting," "lecturer," or…

Institutions of higher education have been gradually employing more part-time faculty over the past several decades. Walsh estimates that part-time faculty employment across all types of institutions increased 79 percent from 1981 to 1999. The growth of part-time faculty at community colleges is equally astounding. It is now estimated that 67…

Although the continuity of faculty is an important factor in sustaining an institution's general education program, if the measure is attainment of learning outcomes, qualitative considerations, and not a faculty member's employment status, are more important in determining who should teach such courses. This author argues that relatively junior,…

Proposes a framework for examining academic careers and illustrates how it can help categorize findings from various research studies. It then discusses how modifications in graduate education and employment practices may affect different aspects of academic careers, giving particular attention to use of part-time and adjunct faculty. (MSE)

The Northern Virginia Community College's challenge of meeting escalating demands with declining resources has resulted in spiraling increases in part-time faculty hiring. The overarching problem is not the growing number or increasing proportion of adjunct faculty, but institutional neglect of this important faculty group, and its exclusion from…

Data from studies of nonstandard work arrangements for managers, professionals, and college faculty suggest that the experiences of academics in such jobs are similar to those of other professionals as to job quality and worker preferences. Workers in nonstandard work are generally paid less, are less likely to receive health insurance or pension…

Issues concerning the increasing use of part-time and adjunct faculty in higher education that must be addressed include the need for research on faculty work, jobs, and careers, and on the institutional setting for part-time employment; faculty career patterns, incentives and disincentives; role of this group in the academic community; and…

There is considerable concern and unease about personnel practices related to part-time and adjunct faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate teaching assistants, but little evidence of an underlying problem, or that its nature is understood, or that academe knows what to do about it. It is suggested that traditional faculty should regard this…

Based on an extensive survey of the numbers, salaries, and benefits of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty in ten academic disciplines, a November 2000 report from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) clarified how colleges and universities depend on contingent labor and how inadequately many of these faculty are supported. A group of…