<p>I was an adjunct and now I’m tenure track and here’s my perspective. It would be surprising if you didn’t, at some point, as an undergraduate, take at least a few courses taught by part-time or non-tenure track faculty. </p>
<p>I realize now, in retrospect, that all of my “science for dummies” type courses as an undergrad were actually taught by adjuncts at Wellesley (back about 25 years ago). We had a distribution requirements and let’s just say I’m no rocket scientist. I did not suffer AT ALL by taking Oceanography and Horticulture from advanced grad students at Harvard who had been hired to teach us nonsciencee types, rather than fulltime tenure track faculty. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, the problem arises when you end up taking, for example, most of the courses in your major from adjuncts – particularly if your institution doesn’t treat them well and as a result turnover is high. (That’s why you should be wary of a school that is ALWAYS advertising for adjuncts in your major.) You will find yourself eventually in a situation where you need recommendations for summer internships, grad school, etc. and you won’t be able to locate the professor whom you really liked and whose class you got an “A” in, because he moved on to another school that paid more. You might also find it difficult to really establish a strong relationship with a professor so that he’ll remember you when you need that letter – if your professor (a.) has no office (b.) has to rush off after every class because he has a class that starts elsewhere in 45 minutes (c.) teaches six sections a semester with 35 students in each, every semester including summers. </p>
<p>Also, universities with high adjunct turnover sometimes hire a professor two weeks (or less) before the semester starts – so you might end up with a situation where the professor is only a chapter ahead in the textbook than you, the student. It’s nice if you can take a final that’s been “roadtested” by a couple of previous classes, so that all the confusing questions with bad wording have already been identified and fixed/thrown out, etc. It’s also nice if your professor already knows how to teach. (Sometimes advanced grad students will adjunct as a way to acquire teaching skills – i.e. they know a lot about their subject, but are not yet familiar with lesson plans, organization and presentation skills, etc.)</p>
<p>Yes, you can also fault full-time tenure track faculty for occasionally giving a bad final, being unavailable for office hours or having poor presentation skills – but these are some patterns which I have seen which you might want to watch out for. (And yes, the best way to find patterns is to look at course catalogs and note how many courses are taught by either “Staff” or “TBD” (to be determined)).</p>