Distance Education, Part-Time Faculty and Migrant Workers

Moore (2007) provides abundant challenges to conventional beliefs about higher education. With stark assertions such as “… we must grow beyond the old idea that instruction should be the monopoly of people full-time on the college payroll” he also raises concerns that he has too sanguine a view on the higher education enterprise, that higher education governed by administrators would in some way act in the best interests of students. The theory that doing otherwise would self-correct by market mechanisms, espoused by Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, is directly implicated in the current financial crises (). What seems logical and rational in theory turns out to be simply wrong in practice.

Greenspan, 82, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. (AP, 2008)

Similarly, faculty governance is a critical safeguard to quality control and open investigation – hallmarks of higher education. A university comprised of only part-time or consultant faculty may be responsive to customers in the short-term, but with what threats to quality and mission in the long term? Such a university lacks a countervailing power to administrative governance and we have seen how aberrant this can become in the extreme.

Accreditation standards for academic programs rightly ask about the adequacy of resources for programs undergoing review for accreditation, and consider full-time, terminally credentialed faculty a critical resource.

Absent governance by full time faculty with a long term interest in higher education and in the institution they serve, and accreditation requirements, the economic imperative when using less than full time faculty is the seasonal harvest worker model. Despite Moore’s many insights, on this matter his theory leads to a conclusion that empiric results are unlikely to support.

Moore, M.G. (2007).Web 2.0: Does It Really Matter? The American Journal of Distance Education, 21(4), 177–183.





AP Associated Press. Greenspan admits ‘mistake’ that helped crisis. October 23, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27335454/