What it Means to Have an Adjunct as a Professor
(Slightly modified version of the original statement by Dr. Whitney Cox, @ProfWCox)
Estimates suggest that adjunct instructors teach about 70% of college courses in the U.S. Overwhelmingly, adjuncts are the teachers of the required courses, the introductory courses, the largest and fullest-enrolled sections, and the lower-level courses. An adjunct instructor is hired on a term-by-term or year-by-year basis, often with little advanced notice, with no long-term job stability, with upwards of two months into a semester before receiving the first paycheck, and few or no benefits (e.g., health insurance or retirement savings).
The growing reliance on adjuncts in U.S. higher education impairs the conditions under which courses are taught and thus the quality of your education. This is not because we are less qualified, skilled, or experienced. Rather, the conditions of adjunct employment are ill-suited to teaching. As the saying goes: “Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.”
Adjuncts are not regular members of the faculty; we are paid an hourly rate based only on the time we spend in the classroom (that is, ~3 hrs/week per class). Hourly pay doesn’t adequately account for time with students outside of class, grading papers, or preparing lectures for class, designing the course, or writing letters of recommendation. Out of dedication to our students, adjuncts regularly perform such tasks, but it is essentially volunteer, unpaid labor.
Adjuncts, in general, have little job security; since we are hired on a term-by-term basis we have little assurance that our job will be there in the future, even if we have been teaching at a school for many years. As with wage disparities and job security, adjuncts receive far fewer benefits than full faculty members (i.e., Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors). At the University of Houston, adjunct teaching loads are often capped so that we don’t qualify for any health insurance benefits. This is typical of other institutions. This means that many adjuncts teach at multiple colleges/universities in order to get enough work, thus limiting our time available for all of our students. Furthermore, adjuncts are rarely given private offices in which to meet privately with students or to complete class preparation and grading. I do not have such an office, which is why all meetings are by individual appointment only. And while all instructors are required to hold office hours by the university, adjuncts are unpaid for this time and labor.
So, why should you care about the number of adjuncts at the University of Houston? Although adjuncts are qualified, talented, committed professionals, our work conditions hurt students and the whole school: When adjuncts are overworked and underpaid, we have less time and energy to devote to each class and each student. A critical element in a functional college is fair compensation for comparable work — this will improve students’ experience along with that of adjunct faculty. It is also not uncommon for adjuncts to quit mid-semester because they found a better-paying job, thus leaving students stranded well after the add/drop deadline. When adjuncts’ academic freedom is threatened by limited job security, students suffer because they are exposed to a less diverse, less exciting set of ideas and approaches. When adjuncts have short notice to design courses, the quality of the courses you take might not be as high as your instructors are actually capable of providing. When there is a high turnover rate among adjunct faculty, students may be unable to take another course with (or even locate) an instructor they studied with in the past. Students should also be aware that it is not in their best interest to ask an adjunct for a letter of recommendation. Graduate and professional programs tend to take such letters less seriously than those written by full-time faculty. I am hired as adjunct faculty. It’s important that you are aware of what that means for your education.
You may also want to check out these additional discussions, chronologically arranged by date of publication:
- The PhD Now Comes with Food Stamps (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.26.12)
- Adjunctification: Living in the Margins of Academe (Hybrid Pedagogy, 11.17.13)
- Adjunct Professors Fight for Crumbs on Campus (Washington Post, 8.22.14)
- Contingency and Gender (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.24.15)
- The Cost of an Adjunct (The Atlantic, 5.26.15)
- There is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts (The Atlantic, 9.15.15)
- True Stories from the Educated Underclass (Gawker, 4.27.16)
- Dear student, I just don’t have time to mark your essay properly (The Guardian, 5.20.16)
- This is How You Kill a Profession (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3.27.19)
