<p>adjunct= part time </p>
<p>A job for people who are working elsewhere, and do this for a small portion of their working effort. Many are in industry (if in engineering), or private firms (accounting and law schools use adjuncts to teach some of the more pragmatic parts of the job from people who do it all day). In the humanities you get the phenomenon of people who have PhD’s, would really like faculty jobs, but cannot get them, so they support themselves with odd jobs, and cobble together as many adjunct appointments as they can find. This is quite exploitative on the part of the college. The pay is terrible for someone who actually relies on this for their income. This is pure piecework teaching for hire.</p>
<p>lecturer= full time job. Expect that this will be the primary employment obligation for the individual. Since they are full time, they are engaged in the range of activities of faculty members. They are hired to teach, but are assumed to be scholars. Typically does not lead to tenured position, but not prohibited.</p>
<p>Although lecturers are not getting rich, they are paid much more than adjuncts. They are people who might well get a regular faculty job at Harvard or elsewhere, unlike adjuncts.</p>
<p>Completely different. Not just a different title, a different job.</p>
<p>Hiring more lecturers would still create problems. Students expect to be taught by Harvard faculty, and lecturers are somewhat less. Lose the advertising value of trotting out your big names for the prospective majors. Students also use these courses to get to know a professor or two as they sort out their plans. Since they are marginal in the academic world, lecturers cannot help as much as regular faculty.</p>
<p>Again, there is more going on than learning some principles of intro chemistry.</p>
<p>Sure, one could say “large classes are part of the deal. Don’t like it? Don’t go to Harvard”. The point of the article is that Harvard is concerned about attrition in the sciences and identifies class size as a potential cause. The question is whether the solution of making the intro classes smaller is worth the price.</p>