75% of all teaching faculty members across the US are adjuncts. This sad state of affairs has been discussed form every angle, except one. There would be no excuse to hire so many adjuncts if there didn’t exist such an overwhelming need to provide remedial learning.
Students come from high school lacking the most basic skills needed to acquire a real university education. In this sense, the only difference between students from fancy Ivy League schools and students from non-fancy state schools is that the rich kids are a lot better at passing meaningless standardized tests. In everything else, they are all equally ignorant.
So we have to dedicate the first 2 years (at least) to teaching them the basics of history, geography, foreign language, calculus, academic reading and writing. Lecturers, instructors and adjuncts are hired to serve as high school teachers to people who already have high school diplomas that mean less and less every day.
And only after the basic skills get finally rammed into the students’ heads, can the real teaching of the kind that merits hiring a research scholar begin.
On the level of secondary education, too many students are still being educated as if we were still in the 1920s and needed an enormous number of factory workers, waitresses, and housewives. The world has changed and we are on the verge of a reality where even a Bachelor’s diploma will not be enough to qualify for a decent job. Still, high schools are not catching up and immature parents can’t conceive of putting in any effort on their own.
There is no adjunct problem that exists in isolation. This is part of a much larger issue: a society that can’t absorb changes fast enough.
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