Since many of the other angles here have been covered already, I'll just point out that fair pay and benefits aren't the only thing absent when universities mov

Since many of the other angles here have been covered already, I'll just point out that fair pay and benefits aren't the only thing absent when universities move towards a heavily adjuncted workforce. One additional vulnerability of adjuncts is that without the protection from being fired that's part of a tenured position, political (or whatever people have decided to make political these days) speech could be held hostage by threatening someone's job. This sounds pretty outlandish, but just recently we saw an attempt at this very thing in Oklahoma[0]. While that didn't succeed, if a massive donation was tied to a professor's dismissal, would every university resist that? Florida officials are now banned from using the phrase "climate change"[1]; it's also not inconceivable that state schools could be subject to similar restriction. [0]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/oil-tycoon-harold-hamm-wanted-scientists-dismissed-dean-s-e-mail-says http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/oil-tycoon... [1]http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article1298372...