ABSTRACT
Higher education is not the only industry with a growing reliance on a contingent workforce. Many industries engage in the same practice but with a range of treatment, from per diem nurses, who receive relatively high compensation for their contingency, to users of platform capitalism that typically pays lower wages for piecework. Most institutions become dependent on contingent labor as a way of cutting costs, yet it is not clear if contingent labor truly reduces overall costs in the long run. Administrative costs rise with fewer full-time faculty to do service work, including campus governance and student advising. Campuses with the worst practices see many of the worst outcomes from demoralized and overworked contingent instructors, whereas campuses with the best practices have found that non-tenure-track faculty who emphasize teaching are likely to outperform their tenured and more research-oriented peers.
