Colleges that want to set the stage for their students to succeed should stop hiring adjunct professors at the last minute and then denying those instructors access to the technology and resources they need to teach effectively, a new report suggests.

“The ‘just in time’ staffing model is unjust for faculty and for students and clearly compromises education quality,” says the 26-page policy report from the Center for the Future of Higher Education, a virtual think tank of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. (The center plans to post the report on its Web site on Thursday.)

Contingent faculty members who are hired just before the start of an academic term can opt to prepare for their classes while they’re not on the payroll or resign themselves to teach courses for which they’re not adequately prepared, the report says. Add a lack of access to personal office space, computers, library resources, and curriculum guidelines, among other things, and “the education experience of students suffers, both inside and outside of the classroom,” it says.

The report is based on the findings of an online survey of 500 contingent faculty members conducted last fall by the New Faculty Majority Foundation, the research arm of the advocacy group New Faculty Majority.

“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, but we realize that people don’t get that connection,” said Maria Maisto, who is president of the New Faculty Majority and a co-author of the report. “We wanted to take faculty working conditions and really connect them to student learning. We need to really explain how those conditions shortchange students.”

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