The majority of undergraduate instructors hold contingent appointments, a term used here to include not only the non-tenure-track part-time faculty but also many instructional staff who lack faculty status, an increasing proportion of full-time non-tenure track faculty, and a substantial number of graduate student teaching assistants.

This volume seeks to foster a dialogue, long overdue, between those who believe that the academy has failed to give adequate respect and support to undergraduate instruction and those who believe that the academy has failed to give adequate support and respect to the selection and terms and conditions of employment of undergraduate instructors. It may be that the increasing dependence on contingent appointments imperils undergraduate learning no less than it imperils the future of the academic profession.

This is the 123rd volume of the quarterly journal New Directions for Higher Education.