As for accountability, the adjunct courses generate interdepartmental collaboration that serves as the best resource for ensuring reasonable standards across fields. The administration routinely reviews the courses, but far more important is the discussion within and between departments. The alternative to hiring faculty with multiple doctorates is to let the faculty share responsibilities for both disciplinary competence and excellence in writing. Of course writing programs should take the lead, but our experience has proved that we can learn from as well as teach our colleagues in other fields. There are a host of lesser advantages to the adjunct system.
Students have easier access to faculty assistance as they write.
Faculty members rethink what they are doing and how their courses fit into the rest of the curriculum. Teachers of composition are refreshed by the opportunity to work on meaningful and sophisticated assignments. The main drawback to the adjunct system is that disagreements arise between individuals and occasionally between departments about what constitutes good writing. For the most part, these disputes have been civilized, and as I have suggested, such conflicts can be turned into valuable opportunities to assess writing and its place in the university. The author is Lecturer in the Writing Programs at the University of California,Los Angeles.