SXC.HU, FRED KUIPERS
For first-year university students, the recent uptick in adjunct instructors may not be a bad thing. A National Bureau of Economic Research study published this month tracked eight cohorts of freshmen at Northwestern University to determine how different faculty impacted learning—finding that students in adjunct-taught courses were more likely to enroll and succeed in subsequent classes in the same subject area.
Non-tenure-track or adjunct instructors now make up some 70 percent of the teaching faculty at universities across the United States, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Previous studies have suggested that hiring more adjunct faculty, particularly part-time adjuncts, could have negative long-term effects on institutions.
But the present study examined the impact of faculty status on “genuine student learning.” From fall 2001 to ...
