The Other Higher Education Bubble: Labor Supply

By James Patterson. In the conservative imagination, the archetypal professor is Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys, Dave Jennings from Animal House, or Dr. Talc from A Confederacy of Dunces. They have old corduroy sports coats with worn suede elbows, stale lectures, incomprehensible publications, poorly kept offices, and leering stares for young co-eds. The truth is far different. Most professors are men and women in worn-out clothes from their senior year of college (the last time they could afford clothes). They no longer have offices, but they have up-to-date lectures. They chase jobs, not co-eds. The only continuity, perhaps, is the prose of their academic papers, when they have time to work on them. In other words, the archetypal professor is now the adjunct, and she is miserable.
The Once Silent Majority
Adjunct professors comprise upwards of 70 percent of university faculty nationwide. Often, they teach the introductory courses that tenured or tenure-track faculty wish to avoid. More...