"I expect to be engaged as an equal": collegiality expectations of full-time, non-tenure-track faculty members

Nationally, non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) represent the new majority. Efforts to move the full-time NTTF role from expendable labor to sustainable professional position have led to improvements in policy and working conditions at many institutions. Still, the profession broadly has just begun to grapple with the implications of this shifting labor market on aspects of the profession traditionally reserved for tenure system faculty, such as collegiality. In this qualitative study we use Bess's (High Educ Handb Theory Res 8:1-36, 1992) framework of structure, culture, and behavior to analyze the collegial expectations of 38 full-time, NTTF members. Participant accounts point to a desire for parity despite differentiation, and highlight the fundamental contradictions of a professional virtue that requires the independence of faculty for it to be fully expressed.