Bad pay, zero job security, no benefits, endless commutes. Is this any way to treat PhDs responsible for teaching a generation of college students?

2 years ago she showed up in person at Mary Washington & started knocking on doors like a cold-call saleswoman. The approach paid off - sort of. The college hired her as an adjunct professor.

Georgetown & George Mason did the same. So she hit the road.

The wheels haven't stopped spinning since. Each day she drives at least 3 hours. In fact, she frequently spends more time in the car than in the classroom. This past academic year she taught 11 courses, memorized 250 students' names & graded a thousand papers.

At Mary Washington, she's grateful to have her own desk in a small, shared office with no window. But after teaching there for a year & a half, she still doesn't have a clue where the campus library is. There's no time.

When she's done teaching, she's off to George Mason, where more than 20 adjuncts share a communal room with a few desks. Or to Georgetown, where she squats in other people's offices, often working on the edge of a desk because she's afraid she'll disturb a faculty member's papers.

As Tracy finishes her classes & office hours at Mary Washington today, she's running behind schedule. She tears out of the parking lot at 11:20 a.m. & soon merges onto I-95.

But at Quantico she sees her nightmare unfolding before her: cars at a dead stop & a backup for miles. Slowly the traffic starts inching along. It's 13 agonizing miles before she finally veers onto Route 123. She checks her watch. It's already 12:15 p.m., 15 minutes before class at George Mason.

She weaves along the 2 lane road as fast as she can but still arrives 15 minutes late. She parks, then runs across campus. When she arrives at her classroom door, panting, she sees half her students at the board scribbling their names before they leave. The others have already gone.

"I'm here! Sit down," she says as she tries to compose herself. Somehow she gets the remnants of her class to take their seats as she begins her lesson.

A few students linger afterward to talk about an upcoming paper. One student seeks her advice about transferring to another college. When she finally gets back on the road it's 2:30 p.m.

In 45 minutes, she needs to start her next lecture at Georgetown. But the bad dream won't stop. In front of her on I-66 she sees more cars backed up bumper to bumper.

When she finally gets to Georgetown, she circles frantically for a parking spot. Maybe they waited, she thinks as she dashes to her building. Maybe they waited. She pushes out of the elevator & into the classroom. This time, the chairs are empty.

On the chalkboard she sees the only message her students left her: WE WERE HERE. WHERE WERE YOU?

She picks up the eraser & clears the board, then heads out the door to get ready for another day.

The growing reliance on adjuncts, critics say, cheats the most vulnerable of students: freshmen.

They're the most likely to wash out of college from a bad experience, the detractors argue. They're also the ones most likely to have a harried part-timer teaching them History 10 or English 101.

Even though there are some excellent adjuncts, people worry that the overall quality of teaching suffers. Can someone like Tracy, they ask, teach 5, 6 or more classes a day consistently, spending hours a day in a car & not cut corners eventually?

Tracy says she hasn't, but those who've seen overworked teachers like her before say youthful diligence lasts only so long. Eventually adjuncts with such loads might start replacing essays with multiple-choice tests. Or start assigning books they haven't had time to read themselves.

And then there's the dislocation & disorganization that comes from lecturing minutes after fighting traffic.

"The system is created to exploit people just like this," Richard Moser says about Tracy's situation. As a representative with the American Association of University Professors, he's focused on the plight of adjuncts.

"You get some young PhD that's all eager & up to date & strong. You get to use them for a few years & then sooner or later they'll get frustrated & angry. Then they get another fresh piece of meat to fill the slot & then use them for a few years & then they get burned out. You get rid of them, then you get another one.

Is this the way to run a university?"

Many in teaching circles worry this is just the beginning. At some point, they fear, entire departments will be made up of part-timers hired by the term or by the year.

The result, they say, would be the end of the traditional college faculty. Many of those same educators think that outcome ultimately may be decided by parents, who could revolt against paying $30,000 a year to have their kids taught by someone who's also toiling at the local community college. Students, meanwhile, seem largely oblivious to the difference between full & part-timers.

"Someone had to explain what an adjunct was," says Valerie Sprague, a freshman who had Tracy for 2 classes at Mary Washington this year. "It's not even an issue . . . Do they get paid less?"

She wouldn't need to ask that if she'd seen a documentary called "Degrees of Shame." The film, by Barbara Wolf, came out 5 years ago, comparing adjuncts to migrant farm workers. There's also a book, Ghosts in the Classroom, that compiled essays from adjuncts with titles like "Adjunct Apartheid," "Adjuncts Are Not People" & "Adjunct Misery."

Despite all their angst, adjuncts are notoriously fearful about speaking out. They're afraid that one wrong word, in or out of the classroom, will mean that they won't be hired back. And they know they're particularly vulnerable when it comes to student evaluations.

If they receive too many low marks, they'll be gone. It's a frequent adjunct dilemma: Be an easier grader & likely get better reviews, or stick to your standards & risk not teaching at that college again.

It's not all bad news for adjuncts, however. John Hammang of the American Association of State Colleges & Universities, which represents 435 institutions & systems, points out that many are happy with their part-time status.

They have families & can't work full time. Or they're retired or have full-time jobs elsewhere & are uninterested in tenure. Adjuncts, he says, can improve the educational experience for students if used in the right way.

They can bring real-world expertise into the classroom that's hard to replicate. Colleges can also react to student curriculum demands quickly with adjunct teachers even when they aren't sure if future students will be interested.

The harsh truth, says Hammang, is that not all adjuncts are good enough to be full-time faculty. At least being an adjunct allows them to teach. A number of college administrators also argue that this is the trade-off in the era of mass higher education.

If you want to keep tuition down so more people can afford it & not increase public spending, you need adjuncts.

Take the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where 34% of the staff is adjuncts. The enrollment in computer technology-related courses has mushroomed by 60% in the past few years.

The university can't find enough new full-time teachers to keep pace with the growth. Even if it could, it couldn't afford to hire them all. Adjuncts fill the gaps. Part-timers also allow the school to react on short notice to changing enrollment.

This fall UMBC needs teachers for 40 additional classes. The administrators don't have time to do a nationwide search, so they'll turn to adjuncts.

The alternatives, according to Provost Arthur Johnson: Raise tuition or cap enrollment. He likes neither choice. He points out that UMBC produces a large portion of the information technology graduates that Maryland's high-tech industry needs.

"We're fulfilling an important economic role here," he says. Adjuncts make that happen.

The quality of education, Johnson argues, doesn't suffer. If anything, he says, students benefit from adjuncts who bring cutting-edge experience into the classroom in fields like computer science. And the salary, ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 a course, is fair, he says.

Remember, he says, adjuncts don't have to advise students or do research. They make less, but they also do less. Their pay is determined by the open market, he says, as with most other jobs. "No one is forcing anyone to be an adjunct."

Still, Hammang's organization, which includes UMBC, thinks many of its members are overly reliant on adjuncts as states continue to tighten budgets. The late 1990's was a "missed opportunity," says Hammang. That's when colleges could have afforded to cut back on their adjunct dependency.

He thinks there'll be another chance in a few years. The question is how much desire there will be to change.

Many adjuncts have decided they don't want to wait to find out. In the last few years, adjunct unionization movements have sprouted up around the country & they're getting results. California has been one of the leaders, setting aside $57 million last year to increase part-time salaries at community colleges & an additional $7.1 million to pay adjuncts for office hours.

Similarly, the state of Washington allocated an extra $17.5 million recently to raise adjunct pay at 2 year colleges. More battles are raging from Pennsylvania & New York to Illinois & Wisconsin in both public & private colleges.

This momentum hasn't hit the Washington area, but that could change soon. Look inside this fifth-floor conference room at UMBC, where 6 professors have gathered on this Monday afternoon. Some are adjuncts.

Others have one-year renewable contracts. All are unhappy.

"The very fact that we are here means that we mean business," labor union organizer Scot Hamilton says to the group. "It's ironic. Universities are supposed to be the bastions of freedom, but when you look behind the scenes, they're very exploitative."

His colleague Cathleen McCann tells those assembled they can't rely on the university to treat them fairly. Only collective bargaining will do that. She's told faculty on 6 other Maryland campuses the same thing.

As the lead organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in Maryland, McCann is scrambling to organize faculty members at the state's public 4 year college campuses, where 38% of the faculty, systemwide, is part time.

By next year, she hopes, legislation will pass to force the system to bargain. If that happens, McCann could be sitting down with administrators by next summer to demand higher pay, longer contracts & benefits for all adjuncts.

Some places are changing on their own. The president of American University, where 1/4 of the faculty is part time, last fall declared that the university will significantly cut back its reliance on adjuncts. The remaining part-timers will teach more, make more & have more responsibilities.

But some in academia, like Jonathan Loesberg, until recently chair of AU's literature department, think the use of adjuncts needs to stop altogether.

"I'm authorized to pay an adjunct here to teach a course something like around $2,000," says Loesberg. "That seems to me on the face of it exploitative. If such a person taught the standard full load at AU, which would be 5 courses, they'd be making $10,000 a year without health benefits, without any type of retirement benefit, with no benefits at all - I feel terrible about it.

But these are crocodile tears. I feel terrible about it, then I offer them the money. And yet the people are always happy to get the jobs because their alternative isn't getting anything."

Tracy wants one of those adjunct jobs this fall. She sent an application letter to his department & received a terse e-mail reply saying someone would contact her later. She hasn't heard anything back. She's thought about showing up at his office & lobbying for the course in person - looming bills have made her bold.

First, there's the $46,000 in student loans from graduate school. Then, there's the $10,000 in credit card debt. The only way she can make ends meet is by teaching 4 to 6 courses a term, with pay ranging from $2,385 a class at George Mason to the relatively lavish $4,695 a course at Georgetown.

But the biggest financial crunch comes during the summer, when the teaching dries up.

Last summer Tracy didn't have any classes to teach, so she applied to 15 temporary agencies. After a month of waiting, only one found her regular work at $12 to $15 an hour doing proofreading. But at least that was better than the endless word-processing tests that the secretarial agencies had her do.

"I have a PhD. I can't believe I'm doing this!" she would think. Then she'd put her head down & start typing.

She also tries not to think about her car breaking down, even though it has more than 100,000 miles on it. But one day in January she couldn't ignore the orange "check engine" light on her dashboard any longer.

After a morning class, she pulled into a small repair shop in a desolate part of Fredericksburg. Half an hour later, a chatty mechanic explained that her catalytic converter was dead.

That - plus a new battery & an oil change - well, that'll cost her $768. She grimaced, leaned an elbow on the counter & cradled her face in her hands as she tried to figure out how to pay for it. Her credit card was maxed out.

"That's it. Prostitution. Adjunct turned prostitute to pay for car repairs," she moaned to no one in particular.

Patrick O'Malley finished his PhD at Harvard a year before Tracy. Both started teaching in Georgetown's English department 2 years ago. The difference: O'Malley is a tenure-track assistant professor.

On this day when Tracy hustles between Fredericksburg & Fairfax, he sits in his office. Light is streaming in thru a window. He looks relaxed with no classes to teach this term. He's on a full-paid leave from the university to work on his first book, which should help him gain tenure when the time comes.

Whereas Tracy worked on her own book between jaunts on the freeway, Patrick spends his days in Massachusetts studying at Harvard's libraries. Even when he is teaching, his load is much lighter.

When Tracy had 6 classes, he had 3. Last year, he taught a reduced load of 2 classes a term so he could adjust to Washington & to his new university.

He walks from the Dupont Circle apartment he owns & takes a shuttle to campus, where he stays all day. While Tracy is scurrying between campuses, he's rapidly becoming an integral part of Georgetown's. He has time to go out to lunch with professors who can help him with his career later. He goes to faculty parties that Tracy rarely attends.

The English department is filled mostly with strangers to Tracy; to O'Malley, they're friends & colleagues.

O'Malley knows about adjuncts like Tracy. He knows about the lives they lead & knows he couldn't do it. "It would be too exhausting."

Talk to veteran adjuncts about Tracy & they tell you they were once like her. They, too, thought being an adjunct was just a way station en route to their real lives. But then the years passed & at some point they began to realize they were stuck.

They'd been tainted by the adjunct label & were never going to get full-time jobs.

"You're used goods now & you're going to have to face it," a colleague told one adjunct after he'd been teaching for 5 years.

Those who hire full-time faculty say that's not far from the truth. When they get 375 applicants for a single job, they need some way to weed people out. If someone's been an adjunct for a while, a search committee starts wondering what's wrong with them. It may not be fair, but it's how things work.

After a while, longtime adjuncts begin to resign themselves to their fate. Year after year, they teach out of cardboard boxes. They often give up on doing original research. Mostly they have time only to drive & teach.

And they don't cross the invisible line separating adjuncts from full-time members. It's a line that makes one adjunct of 15 years, a winner of several teaching awards, wait till everyone else has eaten when there's food laid out for a department event. He sneaks in later to eat what's left.

On an early January morning, the sun is rising as Tracy tailgates a silver pickup in the fast lane. It's the first day of the spring semester & she'll lead 2 classes today at Mary Washington.

Then this afternoon she'll go to Georgetown, where she'll tell her class she's an adjunct professor, "which means I'm pond scum."

But at this very moment as she cruises down I-95, she's thinking about the letter she got just yesterday from the University of California at San Diego. It's the 6th rejection she's gotten in this round.

She still hopes 1 of 5 more applications, to Bucknell, Duke, Fordham, Spelman or Toronto, will come thru. But she has more immediate worries. She doesn't know if she'll have any classes to teach this summer. That's still weighing on her mind that afternoon as she sits at the Tombs, a bar in Georgetown.

"Maybe I could work here this summer?" she says to the bartender. He nods, not sure if she's joking.

She makes another push. "So if I need a job for this summer, can I hit you up?"

As she eats, she thinks about what it would be like being a professor & serving burgers & beer to students. She decides she could handle that. At least it's a job.

"I've waited tables before in Dublin," she says. "I'm not above working in a bar."

The last application responses eventually trickle in. By March they've all told her no. She tries to stay positive, but she can't help but wonder sometimes if maybe, just maybe, she's not good enough to make the cut. It's been nearly 2 years since she graduated & 38 places have said they don't want her.

"It's frustrating because I would have thought at this point in my career, I would have at least gotten an interview."

Over the next month, a new hope arises. George Mason has a one-year position open in the English department. The money would be better & the course load lighter. It would be a good launching pad for a full-time job somewhere else.

Once more she puts her name in & once more she lets herself hope.

On a bright May morning, Tracy heads to her car in hurry. She weaves thru the back roads toward Alexandria. Her classes are over for the summer break. Today is her first day of work in a different capacity: as a temp.

She managed to get 2 classes to teach during this break, but she still needs clerical work like this.

She heard back about the one-year George Mason job. She didn't get it. So, when next term comes, she'll have 4 adjunct classes between Georgetown & George Mason. She told Mary Washington that she isn't going to work there anymore.

The drive was killing her. Instead, she's going to see if she can drum up one more class in this area. And in a few months, she'll send out more resumes for more full-time jobs. Meanwhile, she's coming out with a book & another paper.

Her chances of landing a real job this year, she tells herself, are better than ever. She isn't about to give up her quest anytime soon, she says. She's put too much of herself into academia to do that. "I'll keep applying. There's not much more I can do."

She pulls into a parking lot, grabs her lunch & hurries toward a marble-&-chrome office building, where she'll spend the next 8 hours looking for typos & spelling mistakes. She steps inside & waits for the elevator. Sometimes there's nothing she can do but wait.

Eric L. Wee, a former Washington Post reporter, was an adjunct--for one semester. His e-mail address is ericwee6@yahoo.com. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article at 1 p.m. Monday on www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.