Discussion of hiring by colleges and universities of part-time faculty suggests that while full-time faculty should teach the core of an institution's offerings, adjunct faculty are appropriately hired to enhance program quality, provide a variety of experiences for students, and teach specialty classes in selected disciplines. Also addresses…

Women faculty will continue to lag behind males in achieving tenure as long as the ideal academic is defined as someone who takes no time off for childbearing. Suggests that the solution is to redefine the ideal worker in academia by offering proportional pay, benefits, and advancement for part-time work. Presents a model half-time tenure track…

Suggestions for effective use of part-time faculty include: define the role; establish a list of persons eligible to teach part-time to ensure legitimacy of those hired; provide part-timers with the same fringe benefits, proportionately, as full-timers; and include part-timers in the intellectual life of the department. (LC)

Collective bargaining is gaining in community colleges as more part-time teachers are being admitted to unions. The rivalry between the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers is discussed along with the status of collective bargaining in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts. (LBH)

The use of part-time, adjunct faculty by many colleges as a money-saving device is reviewed. Implications for both personnel and institutions are illustrated by example and by National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) statistics. (JMF)

The experimental college must not only define new standards of quality education, but also the means to achieve it, and to defend itself against the educational establishment which it seeks to subvert. (Editor)

Britain's Open University is described as an open admissions university that does not compromise academic standards, a technological system that delivers a traditional education, and a distance learning institution that approximates on a mass scale the tutorial relationship of older British universities. (MLW)