So you’re an adjunct professor working for peanuts
The expansion of universities has led to adjunct faculty working for wages that are below minimum wage
Although adjunct faculty provide good to outstanding teaching for students, their limited employment status does not allow them to provide overall educational development to students, generally they do not enhance the reputation of the institution, they are not able to accomplish research and publish their results, and for the most part they do not serve the community. This situation is not in the best interests of our society, yet adjunct faculty currently represent over half of the faculty in most public colleges and universities in the United States. How has this come about? Perhaps a brief recap of my personal career will be a useful introduction to what has happened:
“Hello Rick, I’m calling from the geology department at San Fernando Valley State College. We are looking for a part-time lecturer and heard that you did a nice job as a teaching assistant at UCLA. If you are interested, we would like you to teach two classes in physical geology for this spring semester.”
And so began a very fulfilling 31-year career teaching within the California state college and university system, first part time and then advancing to being a full-time lecturer at San Francisco Valley State College (which became California State University Northridge) from 1970 to 77. From 1977 to 2001, I was an assistant, associate and full professor at San Diego State University with tenure. And yes, “publish or perish” was definitely a factor but one that I greatly enjoyed. I took early retirement in 2001 and moved to St. George.
The plight of adjunct faculty
In the 1960s, most faculty in higher education were in full-time tenured or tenure-track positions. There were only a few part-time instructors at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s when I was a student there or at either of the two California State University campuses where I taught from 1970 to 2001, and most of them were graduate students working on advanced degrees (teaching assistants). Up to the time I retired in 2001, I really cannot recall hearing the term “adjunct.”
Beginning in 2004 and continuing to the present, I volunteered to teach a geology class for the Institute for Continued Learning, which operates through Dixie State University. In 2010, I was asked by the chairman of physical sciences at that time, Pete Van Valkenberg, to teach two classes in geology as an adjunct instructor at DSU, which I continued to do until I “retired” again 2015.
Basically, adjuncts can be considered as essentially academic slave labor.
The situation was much different at DSU when I started teaching there as an adjunct in the fall of 2010. Because I was looking forward to teaching college-age students again, I never thought to ask about the salary, so I found out after the fact that the “salary” was a bad joke. At that time, DSU (which was then Dixie State College) paid an adjunct $1,650 for a three-unit class for the 15-week semester. Currently, adjunct salary has “risen” to over $1,800 for a three-unit class.
This is still pretty much the lowest pay in Utah and most of the country.
Although adjunct salaries are somewhat higher at other colleges and universities, it is usually not enough to support an individual, let alone a family. Also, most adjuncts are hired only as part-time faculty. Actually, a full-time adjunct would still have a minimal yearly salary. In addition, by restricting adjuncts to being only part-time faculty, an institution thereby avoids the requirements for providing various benefits such as health insurance or any retirement contributions.
Basically, adjuncts can be considered as essentially academic slave labor.
Most adjuncts at DSU must find an additional job or have another source of income in order to survive. Also, note that most adjunct faculty are required to have at least one advanced degree to be hired to teach. If you break the adjunct salary down to an hourly wage, you would find that many of the students in such a class working part time are actually earning a higher hourly wage then the adjunct, who has an advanced degree.
The trend to hire and utilize adjunct faculty rather than to hire tenure-track, full-time faculty is a growing phenomenon in the United States. A main reason for this is that it saves an institution considerable money in salaries and benefits. Adjuncts are also commonly used to teach online classes, which have become very popular in academic circles as another way for an institution to save money.
Currently, at most colleges and universities — DSU, for example — adjunct faculty make up well over half of the faculty. From an educational point of view, most adjuncts do a good to excellent job of teaching their students. However, this trend of hiring adjuncts has some significant and mostly negative impacts on higher education in the United States, as follows:
—Adjuncts usually do not have long-term contracts, are hired on a semester-to-semester basis, and are dependent on what classes need to be taught. Therefore, there is little in the way of long-term continuity of such faculty.
—At most institutions, adjunct faculty do not take part in faculty meetings and have no vote or voice in curriculum, policy, or other issues.
—Adjuncts rarely mentor various student groups and clubs, nor do they serve on campus committees.
—In the absence of tenure or tenure-track advancement, adjuncts have little to no protection from harassment or being fired for their political or social beliefs, negative student comments, or arbitrary administrative decisions.
So what?
Consider the role of public and private colleges and universities in our society. Obviously, teaching is a primary function by several means:
—Exposing students to the vast amount of information, ideas, and concepts that humans have developed throughout our history.
—Teaching students to think about and explore various academic subjects.
—Introducing students to different ideas, concepts, and cultures.
—Providing preparation for professional careers.
—Creating a work ethic and an ability to follow through with short- and long-term projects and goals.
—Mentoring students through their academic careers.
—Working one-on-one with students on projects such as senior theses or other undergraduate research topics.
For some of these functions, adjunct faculty do a satisfactory or better job. However, the fact that most are part time and may or may not continue with the institution for any length of time does not allow for them to provide functions to students in the last three areas. This, therefore, is a situation where the institution is not fulfilling its educational role in our society.
Historically, another major function of academic institutions has been to provide a pivotal location for faculty doing original research, making discoveries, and publishing their work. Most institutions offering advanced degrees also require faculty to do original research and publish their results. In fact, this research requirement is one of the major functions of universities and has been in place since the late 1700s. Just a few examples of such research and discovery among tens of thousands of academics include Jonas Salk (polio vaccine), James Watson, Francis Crick & Rosalind Franklin (structure of DNA), Albert Einstein (general theory of relativity), George G. Simpson (modern synthesis-evolutionary theory), Milton Friedman (various economic theories), Isaac Asimov (biochemistry and science fiction), and Sally Ride (astronaut, engineer, physicist).
Acknowledged academic reputation of top-tier or even second-tier public and private universities in the United States is primarily based on the quality of faculty, published research, and grant acquisition. So most students don’t generally want to attend Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, and so on for their athletic programs but rather for their academic reputations. So again, this precludes adjunct faculty since most do not have the time to do any research, do not have access to use of facilities such as office space or lab accessibility, and are unlikely to receive grant funding. Therefore, it is unlikely that adjuncts could support their own research or any students doing advanced research; thus, they generally would not enhance the prestige of their institution.
Full time, tenure-track or tenured faculty are also encouraged or required to sit on various committees; perform community service such as presenting public lectures; lend their expertise or providing advice to community projects or problems; present their plays, symphonies, or artwork; showcase major or minor discoveries in various fields; and so on. Again, these are not activities in which most adjunct faculty participate.
Why is this trend occurring?
How can we explain the increasing prevalence of adjunct faculty in higher education? Bottom line, I think, it comes down to money. Consider the following trends, most of which have developed since the early 1960s.
Within the past 50 years, colleges and universities have grown significantly in physical size and increased student enrollments. For example, note the increase in UCLA student enrollments: 13,800 in 1946, 30,000 in 1973, and 45,428 in 2017. This enrollment tracks a similar pattern in increased infrastructure and population growth within the United States that began in the post-WWII years. For colleges and universities, this has resulted in construction of more buildings and parking areas and expanded faculty, staff, and administrative positions. All of these require significant outlays of money.
A variety of new mandated programs and requirements such as Title IX, faculty assessment, programs, sensitivity training requirements, and others have resulted in an increase in bureaucracy to implement these programs at educational institutions. Salaries for administrators and staff to handle these programs come out of overall budgets, which have not kept pace with the demand.
A successful athletic program, especially in football and basketball, can provide significant income as well as regional and even national recognition. Although this is true, a shift in priorities to support these programs tends to pull support away from academic programs.
There seems to be a growing distrust of higher education as presumably being too left-leaning or liberal. A lack of support for higher education in general is exemplified by comments such as “Most of those college degrees are insignificant or useless,” “You don’t need a college degree to be successful,” or “Students are being coddled and aren’t learning how to survive in the ‘real world’ anyway.” Also possible but in the category of “conspiracy theory” is the idea that government does not want a widely diversified, highly educated population.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, local, state, and federal government monetary support clearly has not kept pace with this expanding enrollment, and in fact, monetary support in many states has undergone a dramatic decline. For example, “In fiscal year 1998, public university funding accounted for 13.5 percent of the noncapital state government general fund budget in both Arizona and Utah. Since then, the university share has fallen considerably more in Arizona than Utah; the preliminary estimate of the share in fiscal year 2016 is 7.3 percent in Arizona and 12.3 percent in Utah.”
Arizona and Utah are certainly not alone in reducing spending for higher education. All other states have reduced their monetary support by anywhere from 14.8 percent to 69.4 percent between fiscal year 1980 and fiscal year 2011.
Conclusion: follow the money
So there we have it. Within the past 50 years, public and private higher educational institutions in the United States have greatly increased in size and number of buildings, and correspondingly they have experienced increasing numbers of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. These increases are coupled with significant decreases in government funding. What could possibly go wrong?
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