This may be superficially true, but the long-term health of the institution and the educational system are not served. Hiring underpaid adjuncts as teaching lab

This may be superficially true, but the long-term health of the institution and the educational system are not served. Hiring underpaid adjuncts as teaching labor may allow for some good classes--either through the adjuncts' idealism or their hunger to keep their job--but it's only a sort of local maximum. Those good adjuncts came up through a system which valued teaching & knowledge. It's not clear the succeeding adjunct-taught generations will maintain this faith in their fields. See the case study of Schlitz in the 70s (e.g. http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 for a short version): desperate businesspeople go for short term gains by cannibalizing their traditional ways of making things.