Do you know who your college professors are? If you are like most college students, you are likely assuming that your professors are full-time tenured or tenure-track educators, but the reality is that many college professors are part-time freelancers who are working on a semester-to-semester or year-to-year contractual basis.

According to the New York Times, 75% of college instructors were either full-time tenured or tenure-track professionals in 1960 compared to only 27% today. The other 73% of college professors are either adjunct faculty, contingent faculty or even graduate students. Thanks to our troubled economy and due to the fact that these instructors typically do not receive benefits and because their income is generally one-third or less that of a tenured professor, the number of non-tenured professors continues to grow.

“When a tenure-track position is empty, institutions are choosing to hire three part-timers to save money.” says Gwendolyn Bradley, who is the director of communications at the American Association of University Professors, in the New York Times article.

So, why should this be of a concern to you as a student? The reality is that, while adjunct faculty can certainly be talented educators and may very well hold the same degree as tenured professors, they are often treated as second-class citizens on college campuses. As a result, students can be negatively affected. Furthermore, because adjunct faculty is only hired to teach one or two classes and usually do not have an office of their own, they generally are more difficult to get in touch with outside of class time.

In many cases, adjunct faculty is also hired last minute to fill empty positions. As a result, the adjunct faculty member teaching your class may be teaching the class for the first time and with little time to prepare.

As might be expected, schools tend to downplay the number of adjunct faculty members they have on staff. In fact, the American Federation of Teachers has accused some top-ranked universities of exaggerating their percentage of full-time faculty members when reporting to U.S. News & World Report for its annual college rankings. Yet, the New York Times reports that U.S. News decided not to investigate these accusations.

If you are concerned about being placed in a class taught by an adjunct faculty member, don’t be afraid to ask admissions officers what percentage of the school’s classes and discussion sections are taught by graduate students and part-time faculty members. You should also ask whether or not these educators are required to hold office hours and how frequently they are available. You can also utilize the “Compare Higher Education Institutions” search tool located at the American Federation of Teacher’s Higher Education Data Center in order to compare the stats that colleges report to the federal government.

This is not to say that you should automatically assume that an adjunct professor is sub-par. After all, Barack Obama once served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught a seminar on racism and law. Furthermore, there are numerous adjunct faculty members who are quite successful in their fields who are able to bring some excellent real-world experiences to the classroom. Still, if you find yourself in a class with an adjunct professor and you feel as if you are not getting the level of instruction you expect, you might want to consider meeting with the head of the department and exploring other available options, such as being placed in a different section that is headed by a more experienced professor.