Organizational commitment of part-time and distance faculty

In recent years many educational institutions have increased their use of part-time adjuncts, especially with the introduction of distance learning courses. With this growing use questions about the efficacy of part-time and distance faculty have arisen. This paper tests whether organizational commitment, as described by Mowday (1979), differs between four groups of faculty: full-time, on-ground; full-time, on-line; part-time, on-ground and part-time on-line. The authors used a 15 item, seven-point scale instrument to measure commitment of a sample of 479 full and part-time faculties at two Midwestern universities. No significant difference in commitment was observed between the four groups. Introduction and Literature With the rapid growth of on-line education, many educational institutions have added significant numbers of part-time adjuncts to teach courses. With this growth a number of questions and rhetoric have arisen about the quality of instruction from part-timers (Fulton 2000 and Leatherman 1998), "overuse and exploitation of part-time, non-tenure-track " faculty (Kavanagh 2000) and accusations about academic "sweatshops " (Cox 2000). As institutions consider the proper use of part-time faculty, one underlyin