<!-- This short description is INTENTIONALLY "none" - please see WP:SDNONE before you consider changing it! -->

In North America, an adjunct professor, also known as an adjunct lecturer or adjunct instructor (collectively, adjunct faculty), is a professor who teaches on a limited-term contract, often for one semester at a time, and who is ineligible for tenure.

Increase in adjunct labor

Colleges and universities began to employ greater numbers of non-tenure-track faculty in the 1970s.

Various explanations have been given for this shift. Some "trace the practice of hiring part-time instructors to a time when most schools didn’t allow women as full professors, and thus adjunct positions were associated with female instructors from the start." Many non-tenure-track faculty were married to full-time, tenure-track professors, and known as "the housewives of higher education." Others have argued that universities hire non-tenure-track faculty to "offset ... administrative bloat with cheaper labor" Another example is Edward H. Shortliffe, a pioneer in medical informatics, who was an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons circa 2011. Marilyn Milian, a retired Florida judge and star of The People's Court, taught litigation skills as an adjunct faculty at the University of Miami as of 2013; and musician Wayne Horvitz has worked as adjunct faculty teaching composition at Cornish College of the Arts.

Since the 1980s, however, colleges and universities have increasingly utilized adjunct labor, whether full-time or part-time, simply to save money, giving them core undergraduate courses to teach (e.g., introductory math, or freshman-level English composition).

Though adjuncts hold at least a master's degree, if not a PhD, the salary for these positions is relatively low. Many adjuncts must work at several schools at once in order to earn a living in academia. Non-tenure-track faculty earn much less than tenure-track professors; median pay per course is $2,700 Adjunct pay in state and community colleges varies; however, it can be as little as US$1,400 for a 3-credit hour lecture-based course. At many private institutions on the East Coast, payment for a 3-credit hour course hovers around US$3,000–4,000, with average pay nationwide as of 2014 estimated at around US$2,000–3,000.

English professor William Pannapacker noted that adjunct faculty often earn less than minimum wage, when factoring in hours spent on classroom teaching, lesson preparation, office hours, grading of assignments, and other duties.

Some adjunct faculty have remained with the same employer for as long as 25 years without receiving health insurance or retirement benefits. In 2014, Mary-Faith Cerasoli, a homeless female adjunct professor of Spanish and Italian, conducted a protest on the steps of the New York State Education Department Building.

Groups supporting the efforts of adjuncts to organize for improved wages and working conditions include the Service Employees International Union, the United Steelworkers, and the New Faculty Majority Foundation.

Unionization efforts

Increasingly, non-tenure-track faculty are turning to unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, and United Autoworkers, to improve their wages and working conditions.

The American Federation of Teachers has more than 150 adjunct/contingent locals.

See also

  • Precariat, a class of people who are chronically without stable employment
  • Higher education in the United States

References

Further reading

  • Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
  • Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
  • Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America's Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of Chicago Press.