ABSTRACT
If there is a common element in all of the best-known threats to higher education-the uncritical import of business models of administration, the erosion of faculty governance, the inordinate difficulty that new Ph.D.s have in securing decent academic employment, the rise of wholly corporate universities-then it is surely the replacement of well-paid tenure-track jobs with short-term and part-time positions. When universities turn to the business world for guidance, the first advice they get is to cut labor costs. Faculty who find themselves losing effective control over key academic decisions to administrators can see both a cause and effect in the small army of adjuncts that complemented and eventually overtook their own teaching. Institutions like the University of Phoenix most clearly differ from traditional universities in their complete lack of a regular faculty. We may not know exactly what the academy will look like in another generation, but if these trends continue we can be certain that it will be full of part-time and contingent teachers.
