[4] Some have argued that the increase in the use of non-tenured faculty is the result of “financial pressures, administrators’ desire for more flexibility in hiring, firing and changing course offerings, and the growth of community colleges and regional public universities focused on teaching basics and preparing students for jobs.”[5] Others have argued that universities hire non-tenure-track faculty to "offset ... administrative bloat with cheaper labor"[1] to the detriment of students: "while college tuition surged from 2003 to 2013 by 94 percent at public institutions and 74 percent at private, nonprofit schools, and student debt has climbed to over $1.2 trillion, much of that money has been going to ensure higher pay for a burgeoning legion of bureaucrats.
[4] In past decades, adjunct faculty helped universities and colleges expand the range of their course offerings to prospective and existing students.
For instance, as of the early 1990s Marvin Kaye, a prolific fiction author, editor and anthologist, also worked as part-time adjunct faculty of creative writing at New York University[6] Another example is Edward H. Shortliffe, a pioneer in medical informatics, who was an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons circa 2011.
[9] Since the 1980s, however, colleges and universities have increasingly utilized adjunct labor, whether full-time or part-time, simply to save money, giving them core undergraduate courses to teach (e.g., introductory math, or freshman-level English composition).
[13] In 2014, Mary-Faith Cerasoli, a homeless female adjunct professor of Spanish and Italian, conducted a protest on the steps of the New York State Education Department Building.
[14] Groups supporting the efforts of adjuncts to organize for improved wages and working conditions include the Service Employees International Union, the United Steelworkers, and the New Faculty Majority Foundation.