Contingent faculty members spend a greater proportion of their overall time teaching, but the preliminary evidence suggests that these appointees are less accessible to students, bring less scholarly authority to their jobs, and are less integrated into the campus culture. The purpose of this chapter is to offer some reflections on the ascendancy of--some would say preoccupation with--measurable student outcomes as the preeminent marker of higher education quality at a time when higher education is struggling through great changes, and to suggest that the ongoing makeover of the faculty is vitally related, in complex ways, to student interests.