Today's department chairs are attempting to “do more with less,” in response to budget
cuts, disappearing faculty lines, legislators and administrators who think faculty have it
too easy, and an increasingly diverse student population which wants classes offered at
non-traditional times. In such times, hiring adjunct professors to help cope seems to be the
best way to respond to these demands. Too often, though, the crunch of time does not allow
for careful weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of hiring adjuncts. In this
article, I lay out some of the tradeoffs of the apparently simple act of finding “someone to
cover the course.” Concerns about the tradeoffs in the use of part-time and adjunct faculty
are not new to the American Political Science Association. In 1997, APSA was one of 10
academic associations that accepted the invitation of the American Historical Association to
convene in Washington, D.C., to discuss the “growing use of part-time and adjunct faculty.”
In my comments, I will rely heavily upon their articulation of the tradeoffs of using
adjuncts as well as the Department Chair Online Resource Center sponsored by the American
Council on Education. [Note: APSA has subsequently joined with other associations to form
the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) to explore issues related to academic
employment of adjuncts. See www.academicworkforce.org].