Public universities have assumed business-minded practices and norms that more closely align with goals and values of corporations than social institutions charged with creating and disseminating knowledge. One pervasive cost-savings strategy is the outsourcing of instruction to a contingent workforce. This case study explores the experiences of part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty from undergraduate colleges across a striving, public, four-year research institution midway through its ten-year plan to attain Tier I Carnegie classification status and rebrand itself as a "very high" research institution. Findings describe contingent faculty experiences of the double-edged sword of autonomy. Their contingent status freed them from many responsibilities and oversight of tenure-line faculty but also alienated them from other meaningful faculty roles and activities. Drawing from academic capitalism, we theorize their work lives--grounded in now-antiquated notions of non-tenure-track faculty as casual labor, regardless of appointment type--provide descriptive insights into faculty culture and infer potential consequences of economic-minded faculty labor policies.