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In his recent post at IHE, Tim Burke first suggests that "[c]olleges and universities that have chosen to underwrite growth in some areas by steadily degrading the working conditions of adjunct and non-tenured instructional staff and simultaneously relying on that staff to generate more and more of the teaching are going to have to flatly stop doing things that way," on the grounds that students will eventually rebel against the "degradation of educational quality"; then, after some queries from commenters, Tim wonders if, instead, "the ability of adjuncts to juggle multiple positions and stay barely above water economically will come to an end as whatever remaining safety nets they have will snap."  I'm not at all optimistic about his belief that students will rally for more tenured faculty, but Tim's second position bears more investigation.   How many adjuncts have shifted to online teaching, dropped certain campuses from their orbits, or given up altogether in the wake of higher gas prices?  More to the point, will administrations feel the need to make any sort of adjustments in their hiring practices, salary offers, benefits packages (like granting some...), and so forth? Or will they just discover the glories ("glories") of online instruction? (Perhaps, in the future, we'll all be delivering lectures via podcast.) I suspect that the colleges everyone ignores will be the ones who notice the effects first--that is, comprehensive colleges like mine.  We're about twenty minutes away from the next local college and only have one Ph.D.-granting U, the U of Rochester, within reasonable driving distance; to commute here for a part-time job from either SUNY Buffalo or, good heavens, Cornell would be a losing financial proposition of the first order.