<p>In many fields, adjuncts are valuable contributors to the curriculum, as long as their proportions are limited. I'm referring to adjuncts who have practical experience in law, public administration, design, medicine, journalism, and business, as some examples. </p>
<p>But in the "core disciplines" of humanities, social sciences, and sciences, the temptation for universities to go cheap and hire a lot of adjuncts has been hard to resist, and this is nothing new either. As a dept. chair, I always fought my own university's instincts to limit their long-term commitment by hiring adjuncts and would have at most 2 or 3 out of a faculty of 30 or so. In most fields, such temporary faculty take on none of the administrative load of student advising, curriculum development, or graduate (doctoral) training. And students can't count on getting letters of recommendation or having research supervisors from such temps.</p>