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This paper examines limited-term full-time faculty (LTFTs) in Canadian universities in 1991-1992 in response to the author's survey. It addresses the following issues: the faculty hierarchy, the characteristics of LTFTs, career paths, career aspirations and job prospects, barriers to achieving tenure-stream positions, workloads, perceptions of their workplace, and their view of how tenured faculty perceive them. The discussion examines these questions: Are LTFTs a kind of "disposable" faculty? Does hierarchy in academe begin where collegium ends?

Analysis of the status, workload, and economics of Canada's large part-time university faculty workforce suggests that the academic labor force is hierarchically divided between full- and part-time faculty with radically different work processes and institutional treatment. Part-time teachers compensate for fiscal deficits and have degraded and deprofessionalized academic functions. (MSE)

Under continuing financial stringency, the university administration negotiates concessions with full-time faculty to satisfy their interests and maintain the stability of the system. Part-timers, excluded from the collegium, remain peripheral to these arrangements. (Author/MLW)

Highlights the findings that Indo-Canadians' economic opportunities are not consonant with their qualifications. Preliminary observations derived from Canadian census data on Indo-Canadians; Confirmation of the existence of barriers to economic and social mobility; Need for a shift in emphasis from the salience of ethnicity to a search for socio-economic data and information technology.