Brad Switzer, Unsplash New data are out on adjuncts—the part-time, untenured faculty who teach many college classes—and the tale they tell isn’t great. However, dive a little deeper and the truth becomes more complicated.
The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) recently surveyed 43,279 adjuncts across 263 separate educational institutions, looking at their earnings and how those varied by location, demographic, and subject. Despite composing nearly 40 percent of the workforce, adjuncts are poorly paid compared to full-time professors (making a median of $1,166 per credit hour), have fewer benefits, primarily receive only part-time work, and are noticeably more likely than non-adjunct faculty to belong to groups traditionally underrepresented or underpaid in the academy, including “White women, Black women and Black men.”
When it comes to demographic discrepancies between adjuncts and non-adjuncts, discrimination cannot be entirely ruled out as a factor, yet it is almost certainly not the only such cause. Instead, the main reason for the differences between the groups is a diversifying academic pipeline.
The number of adjuncts has blown up, with part-time teachers offering a cheaper alternative to traditional faculty. For over a century, academia was predominantly white and male. That changed in recent decades, as the type of people admitted to the sector broadened significantly and the total number of spots increased. Yet the growth in tenured positions has not kept up with the rise in the number of PhDs produced, due to such factors as the ending of mandatory retirement for professors, limited budgets, and colleges’ unwillingness to shell out the money needed for full-time, tenured positions.
For many, adjunct work is a side gig (part of the broader gig economy) that supplements other income streams. As a result, many prospective academics, particularly from lower-ranked schools, graduate from their PhD programs without lining up tenure-track positions. As a result, they either exit the academic job market or settle for adjunct or postdoctoral roles in hopes of getting a better teaching job down the line. Thus, adjunct positions, by merit of attracting more young people, are more diverse. The implication in (for example) Inside Higher Ed’s coverage that racism is to blame is almost the opposite of the truth.
Why did adjunct positions rise faster than tenure-track ones? The answer is largely financial: Colleges wanted to boost enrollment without significantly increasing costs, and more and cheaper instructors were necessary as a consequence. Moreover, there has been an increase in the number of for-profit and community colleges, both of which keep down operating costs by, among other things, avoiding tenured positions to the extent possible. Thus, the number of adjuncts has blown up, with part-time teachers offering a cheaper alternative to traditional faculty.
In addition, it is important to acknowledge that not all adjunct positions are bad. Many are, and many adjuncts don’t want to be adjuncts. For others, however, adjunct work is a side gig (part of the broader gig economy) that supplements other income streams, making lower wages an acceptable tradeoff for flexibility.
Adjunct positions can also enhance academic instruction, depending on how adjuncts are used. In educational programs focused on professional subjects such as journalism or diplomacy, adjunct positions can be used to bring on experienced practitioners who work full-time and want to teach on the side. This lets students learn firsthand from experts with real experience instead of limiting them to people who are willing to be full-time academics and whose knowledge is often theoretical.
Finally, because some adjuncts are indeed suffering, there are things policymakers and schools can do to support them. For starters, pro-worker policies that support gig workers, such as portable-benefits reform, could help adjuncts with healthcare and other concerns. Additionally, schools could do more to prepare their PhD students for the workforce (including nonacademic career options).
A PhD, at least in an ideal world, confers transferable skills with real job-market applications. Students trained as academics would benefit from learning how to sell themselves and transfer their skills. To fix this, graduate schools should improve career pipelines through better career counseling, internship programs, or job-skills-focused coursework.
Being an adjunct is a far cry from a tenured or tenure-track position, and the people who wind up adjuncting are different than those who don’t. While the data on them may exaggerate the precarity of their situation, universities should still take steps to help those who want better paths.
Zev van Zanten is an economics and mathematics student at Duke University.
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Zev van Zanten
