Education without Teachers

I can tell you one simple truth from my experience out there: The values of the executives who steered that ship of disaster look very similar to the values of those among us who think that the way to sustain the great tradition of public higher education is to trim expenses by outsourcing the teaching—the core of the undergraduate experience—to grad students and adjuncts. (An Academic Rip Van Winkle - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education)

After documenting the misery of work as an adjunct without prospects of a steady, affordable living, David Hiscoe asks what's in it for the students. Not much.  Just more debt as the institution builds itself while losing its focus.  Adjunct teachers aren't always there, not continuously from semester to semester, and not between classes as they hold down other jobs or travel between campuses.  Often, an adjunct doesn't even have a desk of their own.  Education with only ad hoc teaching isn't sustainable.