[jccalhoun]

In the department I was in I was the only non-tenure track person with a phd. All the others only had masters degrees. That is, of course, only one department so may not be representative of other departments. And often it would be difficult to find people to teach the courses. Because there was a limit to how many courses a person could be taught and still be "part-time" the full time, non-tenure track, faculty often ended up teaching extra courses.

Regarding tuition costs, there are a lot of reasons why it has grown so quickly. One is the growth in administration. When my old university announced they wouldn't be doing any more one year contracts and would instead be going with exclusively part-time faculty, I suggested they look into part-time administrators but they didn't seem to think that was a good idea...

Another is the escalating "arms race" of campus amenities. Four year universities feel like they need to add more and more and fancier and fancier amenities to attract students because they feel like if they don't have a new multi-million dollar rec center and the nearby college does that students will be more likely to go to the other college.

A third reason is that the funds colleges get from states is a smaller percentage of their budget now than it was in the past. One of my friends is an advisor at a Big Ten college and she recently posted on facebook that she was going through some old paperwork that had been left in her office and found the university's budget for 1997. Comparing it to 2019, the university's budget had doubled but the amount of money that it received from the state had only increased by about 25%. That money has to come from somewhere (which is one reason why that university has made a big push to attract international students in recent years since they pay a lot more in tuition than in-state students)