With Student Learning at Stake, Group Calls for Better Working Conditions for Adjuncts

by E Wayne Ross on July 31, 2012

The Chronicle: With Student Learning at Stake, Group Calls for Better Working Conditions for Adjuncts

Academe needs a new model for the professoriate that better supports the growing number of instructors who are off the tenure track, the participants in a national project about the changing faculty have concluded.

The participants, who represent a cross-section of academe and its stakeholders, also said in a report being released this week that they need to align to gather data that will paint a clearer picture of higher education’s increasing reliance on contingent faculty.

A key reason for those two strategies to improve the jobs of contingent faculty members is that their poor working conditions may harm student learning, says the report, a “working document” produced by the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.