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[categorical]

I saw this article today in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/business/24lawyers.html?_r=1&hp

It's about the rise of non-partner track jobs at law firms around the country.  If I were disinterested, I might say that it would be interesting to see where the adjunct trend goes next.

[gsawpenny]

It is already on the track to this. No matter the wailing and threats, tenure is dying.  Right now the profession is somewhere between "bargaining" and "depression" with a few youngsters and the old guard clinging to "denial," but the fat lady is singing.  Academia, like the law, can no longer afford to promise a Nobel prize winner in every class when in reality they have always had a poorly trained TA in there.  Education is now a commodity and folks want what they paid for - a PhD in every class from CC to Ivy League freshman all the way to senior.  No university can afford this so they will turn to adjuncts to fill the need - and once they see there are plenty of people out there to do the work they will simply let the tenured ranks fade into history.

[king_ghidorah]

Hate to say it, but the death of tenure might not be the worst thing (I realize that this is a primarily economic question, but I'm at one of those places where the tenured faculty are doing all the things tenured faculty should not do and which give tenure a bad name in the first place).  What is too bad is that we don't have an viable culture of equitable non-TT contract positions in place.   

And yet no one seems to do anything about it...

[parispundit]

Nothing can or will be done. If people stopped doing Ph.Ds, it would just be a boost for online ed and further mass production. Sure, it's third-rate education, but that's what the American market wants. And higher ed exists to give the market what it wants, right?