Full Time vs. Part Time Faculty Forum

[mrwarre85]

I noticed that the majority of schools report that the majority of their faculty are full time faculty. However, one school I'm very interested in (UTK) reports only 30% full time faculty. Should this be a concern?

It is listed in USNEWS reports so I'm guessing someone somewhere must think it is a significant statistic, but I'm having trouble articulating exactly why it may be a negative sign for a school to have primarily part-time instructors. Can anyone articulate this for me?

EDIT: Actually I just did the math and it appears they get faculty to student ratio's using only full time faculty, and UTK's ratio is in line with its piers. Guess they just have a lot of extra part-time faculty laying around? 105 total faculty for 482 students..