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Perhaps at your institution, but where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Even one who took a month

Perhaps at your institution, but where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Even one who took a month of unannounced vacation out of the country then retroactively declared it as work from home when it turned out they had not even accrued the time they took. They were also only approved for one day a week work from home. My point being at least where I work it is next to impossible to fire a full time staffer who is not attached to soft money. An adjunct though is essentially disposable once a year. Part time professors, at the end of any semester.

ModernMech 4y ago
> Where I consult it is much harder to fire an "at will" administrator than it is to fire an adjunct. Of course, this makes perfect sense, due to the role adjuncts fill in the campus community. They are and always have been temporary labor that are used to fill small or short-term roles. For example, they may serve as a project manager on a capstone, a lecturer for a section, or a leader for a recitation. They are not full time faculty and are not expected to fill the role of a full time faculty member. At best they will work for maybe 14 weeks, maybe 6-8 hours a week for one course. Why shouldn't an adjunct be harder to fire than an administrator, who has a full-time, 40 hour per week, year-round role at the university? The problem you are alluding to is when a university builds a faculty out of adjuncts, which is just bad practice, and indicative of a bad university.