Based on an extensive survey of the numbers, salaries, and benefits of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty in ten academic disciplines, a November 2000 report from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) clarified how colleges and universities depend on contingent labor and how inadequately many of these faculty are supported. A group of academic societies under the umbrella of the CAW sponsored detailed surveys to generate solid information on these issues. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, nine societies representing ten disciplines--anthropology, cinema studies, composition, folklore, history, linguistics, English and foreign languages, philosophy, and philology (classics)--sent surveys to departments and programs in their respective fields. Results indicated that in all but three of the surveyed disciplines, traditional full-time tenure-track faculty accounted for less than half of the instructional staff in the responding departments and programs. The CAW data highlighted sharp disparities in the treatment of full-time tenure-track and part-time contingent faculty on salaries, benefits, and basic support for teaching and research. At the level of basic compensation, the surveys' findings demonstrated that full-time non-tenure-track faculty are likely to be given a salary sufficient to support significant attention to their instructional responsibilities. In contrast, part-time faculty, particularly those paid on a per-course basis, receive so little compensation that they must take multiple jobs to maintain even a modest standard of living. A separate survey of part-time faculty sponsored by the American Historical Association indicates further degradation; many faculty reported that they could not have a key to the office and that full-time faculty would use their desk as a drop-off point for syllabi and student papers. Among faculty reporting access to a computer, these were often described as late-model discards from a recent upgrade for a full-time faculty member. The author concludes that it is not difficult to see how this changing social and economic system may have a direct effect on students. Although administrators describe the use of these adjunct faculty as allowing the institution to teach more for less, the practice has instead become a way to earn more in tuition revenue while providing less in education. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)