Universities nationwide are hiring more adjuncts and part-time faculty to meet demand at a lower cost, The Town-Talk of Alexandria reports.
The American Association of University Professors reports that more than 50% of all faculty nationwide hold part-time appointments. Louisiana institutions are seeing similar numbers, leaving some faculty wondering what that means for students.
“There has indeed been a large increase in reliance on adjunct faculty to teach introductory courses here,” says Lewis Deaton, president of the Faculty Senate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
When it comes to differences in the classroom, he says that varies by department.
“While many adjuncts are dedicated, excellent teachers, there are some cases where the quality of instruction that the students get is subpar,” Deaton says.
When he started at UL-Lafayette, all of the freshman biology classes were taught by tenure-track faculty, he notes.
“This is no longer the case,” Deaton says. “Also, full-time faculty used to teach lab sections. This is now all done by graduate students.”
That seems to be happening across Louisiana when it comes to lower level courses, which see the highest demand. Enrollment generally is highest with freshmen and sophomores, and general education courses span many degree programs. More and more of these classes are being taught by adjunct or contingent faculty.
That’s especially true in departments such as math and English that have a large number of sections of introductory students, Deaton says. But the biology department in which Deaton teaches also has seen more part-time instructors.
Salaries and benefits often are the largest cost for any company, and as state funding has dropped, universities have turned to not filling open positions and even eliminating vacant faculty lines. Higher education funding in Louisiana has been cut 42% since 2008, according to a national analysis released in May by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
