Alliance Between TT and Adjunct Faculty That Benefits Both

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

This appears to be one of the straightforward problems to solve: put enough slack into the system and you don't need temps for minor fluctuations.

But this requires very rigidly-specified department size and makeup. For instance, if sabbaticals are every 7 years, then each department must have a number of faculty divisible by 7, AND they must have not merely overlapping expertise, but sufficiently overlapping expertise that all of the courses can be taught by any  6/7 which remain. It's theoretically possible in some situations, but unlikely to occur often in practice.

Not true.
Dealing with load fluctuations using existing staff does not equal maintaining same per-employee load at all times (the latter is actually opposite of "having some slack in the system").
I.e. in the example with 7th year sabbatical, one can still have have 10 people. Just in some years (when 2 employees are off) there will be 12.5% of extra load for remaining people relative to the years with a single sabbatical (assuming all employees have the same load).
Most non-academic employers routinely deal with such fluctuations in load due to vacations (albeit, on intra-annual time scale) without reverting to temporal hires.

[marshwiggle]

This appears to be one of the straightforward problems to solve: put enough slack into the system and you don't need temps for minor fluctuations.

But this requires very rigidly-specified department size and makeup. For instance, if sabbaticals are every 7 years, then each department must have a number of faculty divisible by 7, AND they must have not merely overlapping expertise, but sufficiently overlapping expertise that all of the courses can be taught by any  6/7 which remain. It's theoretically possible in some situations, but unlikely to occur often in practice.

Not true.
Dealing with load fluctuations using existing staff does not equal maintaining same per-employee load at all times (the latter is actually opposite of "having some slack in the system").
I.e. in the example with 7th year sabbatical, one can still have have 10 people. Just in some years (when 2 employees are off) there will be 12.5% of extra load for remaining people relative to the years with a single sabbatical (assuming all employees have the same load).
Most non-academic employers routinely deal with such fluctuations in load due to vacations (albeit, on intra-annual time scale) without reverting to temporal hires.

That's why I said:

(With some flexibility in teaching loads, i.e. that  a person's load only has to average out over 2 or 3 years, and with possibilities like offering certain courses in alternate years, it becomes a little more possible, but still requiring extremely careful hiring and scheduling.)

My point remains that hiring and scheduling is still tricky to make sure that no matter who is missing, everyone else is able to pick up all of that person's courses along with their own. A lot of final year (and grad) courses tend to be exclusively taught by the faculty member who has that specific area of expertise, so even if some people are able to teach other courses as overload, it is only an option as long as they have the subject background as well. To have every subject area taught by every faculty member to be covered by at least two faculty requires, as I said, very careful hiring and scheduling, especially in a small department.

[mahagonny]

This appears to be one of the straightforward problems to solve: put enough slack into the system and you don't need temps for minor fluctuations.

But this requires very rigidly-specified department size and makeup. For instance, if sabbaticals are every 7 years, then each department must have a number of faculty divisible by 7, AND they must have not merely overlapping expertise, but sufficiently overlapping expertise that all of the courses can be taught by any  6/7 which remain. It's theoretically possible in some situations, but unlikely to occur often in practice.

Not true.
Dealing with load fluctuations using existing staff does not equal maintaining same per-employee load at all times (the latter is actually opposite of "having some slack in the system").
I.e. in the example with 7th year sabbatical, one can still have have 10 people. Just in some years (when 2 employees are off) there will be 12.5% of extra load for remaining people relative to the years with a single sabbatical (assuming all employees have the same load).
Most non-academic employers routinely deal with such fluctuations in load due to vacations (albeit, on intra-annual time scale) without reverting to temporal hires.

That's why I said:

(With some flexibility in teaching loads, i.e. that  a person's load only has to average out over 2 or 3 years, and with possibilities like offering certain courses in alternate years, it becomes a little more possible, but still requiring extremely careful hiring and scheduling.)

My point remains that hiring and scheduling is still tricky to make sure that no matter who is missing, everyone else is able to pick up all of that person's courses along with their own. A lot of final year (and grad) courses tend to be exclusively taught by the faculty member who has that specific area of expertise, so even if some people are able to teach other courses as overload, it is only an option as long as they have the subject background as well. To have every subject area taught by every faculty member to be covered by at least two faculty requires, as I said, very careful hiring and scheduling, especially in a small department.

Endgame: the debate about how many adjuncts should be allowed in a school or a department at any given time would be between TT faculty and administration or TT faculty and each other. Especially if there were to be a serious limit, upheld limit. Adjuncts, of course, would not be part of it. And when it was done, nine times out of ten,  there will be adjuncts.