<p>In my opinion, the people who often lose out when a university overrelies on adjuncts are the kids who are in danger of falling through the cracks. Maybe not your kids or mine, but someone’s kids nonetheless.</p>
<p>I’m a professor and an administrator and I spent several hours on the phone this week tracking down resources for a student of mine when I immediately noticed that his written work was not up to par on the first assignment. It turned out that he was an ESL student who needed some extra help and support and because I’m a full-time professor, it was relatively simple for me to figure out who I needed to talk to and get them to return my phone calls and get the student where he needed to be. If, on the other hand, I were an adjunct with no office or computer access and few colleagues whom I knew, it would be much more difficult to figure out who I needed to talk to. Besides that, I’d probably have a lot more students perhaps spread over a variety of campuses and I might have less investment in the university as a whole and in making sure that no student falls through the cracks and that everyone gets a fair shot at success. It’s possible that I might simply have failed the student, or alternately that I might simply have passed the student – but in neither case would I have had the time or incentive to make sure that he succeeded not just in my class but in the university as a whole. </p>
<p>Students who need accomodations because of mental or physical disabilities, undocumented students, students who are homeless, single parents, etc. these are the students who are the most likely to be taught by adjuncts at commuter schools and these are the people who can probably least afford to be. This is a crisis and one that will impact our society as a whole.</p>