The government department at Essex has been able to maintain, and even expand, numbers of full-time academic staff, according to Joe Foweraker, departmental head.

But at the same time it has been busy creating a pool of casual labour to liberate big-name academics for research so that they can help the university shine in the research assessment exercise. To do that the highly successful department has to generate enough money to buy part-time teachers, most of whom are postgraduates.

"We are very deliberately maintaining downward pressure on the teaching loads of established staff," he says. "In the great majority of cases, the people employed are out of our own PhD programme."

For Professor Foweraker the effects of the casualisation are positive. The department is able to take the pick of a large body of very good postgraduate students, he says. The students themselves earn money, which helps them to pay for graduate studies, and makes their own employment prospects more attractive. They also tend to be very enthusiastic and committed teachers.

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"This does no damage to our other big constituency which is our undergraduate students," he says. "We see this casualisation as a virtue, something that helps everybody."

Professor Foweraker rejects the notion that part-timers destroy the ethos of the academy. They are supervised, he says. They undergo a two-day course. They are deeply inserted into a network in the department. Professor Foweraker has up to Pounds 50-60,000 this year - to spend on part-time teaching.

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The money comes from replacement teaching funds for staff who have won research contracts from the Economic and Social Research Council, Nuffield, Volkswagen, Gulbenkian and other foundations, or from the European Union, and from incentive schemes within the university to encourage departments to recruit overseas students, particularly overseas graduate students.

The army of casual teachers is employed on a range of contracts. There are three student bursaries; teaching fellowships or half fellowships; and hourly paid work for part-timers covering first and second-year classes. About 15 people are employed in the third category.

This coming term 350 first-year students in social sciences will take a revamped course called "Democracy". That is now being taught in the style of a large lecture course in a United States state university, according to Professor Foweraker. They will attend two lectures a week and have contact hours with teaching assistants, but will attend no formal classes.