A shortened and tamer version of this appears, retitled, in this month’s Anthropology News (AN), which is a monthly publication of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Although the NFM web address, the article still gets NFM in front of the AAA, an important academic professional organization representing anthropology, a major discipline.
Canary, Eagle,
A mournful trend: the steady replacement of full-time tenure or tenure track faculty - call them “traditionals" - with part-time and/or limited contract instructors, “adjuncts” or “contingents.” Call them adcons. First most evident at community colleges, this trend is now everywhere. For instance, see Nichols and Nichols' Money over Mind, Inside Higher Education, about Vassar College.
All disciplines are blighted, as Marshall Sahlins noted in a 2008 AN issue, that in the country at large, “70 percent of all faculty are adjuncts,” and this “academic demi-monde” has been “noticeable enough” more recently even at University of Chicago.
First the canaries die. Then the eagles start keeling over.
