by P.D. Lesko

It seems ages since I wrote my column. I know that for many of you, this issue of Adjunct Advocate marks a return to the magazine after an interruption in our regular publishing schedule. What we have been doing is planning and implementing a huge change in the life of our 15-year-old publication. We have taken the magazine and made it a completely electronic publication. What this means is that readers will no longer receive a print edition. Instead, the contents will be available online, and each issue will be available in PDF format for readers to download, print out and archive.

Why did we do this? For the same reason, 15 years ago, we founded a magazine for part-time and adjunct college faculty. Then, few within higher education were writing about the plight of the nation’s temporary faculty. Inside Higher Education didn’t exist, and The Chronicle of Higher Education touched, usually tangentially, on the subject during the course of reporting on issues impacting full-time faculty and/or administrators. Every so often, a major newspaper would run a piece about the glut of Ph.D. holders competing for a shrinking number of academic jobs. (Of course, the majority of those off the tenure track do not hold Ph.D.s.) The education unions represented part-time faculty, of course, but some union leaders did so unhappily, seeing part-time faculty as loss leaders. It was at that moment, in September of 1992, that we launched Adjunct Advocate as a print publication.

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