Adjunct Teaching

Adjunct teaching refers to a model of higher education employment where instructors, known as adjunct professors, are hired on a part-time basis to teach courses without the job security and benefits typically afforded to tenured faculty. Historically, adjunct positions were often filled by professionals seeking to share their expertise, but over the past few decades, the academic landscape has shifted significantly. Economic pressures on colleges and universities have led to a dramatic increase in the reliance on adjuncts, with statistics indicating that adjunct faculty now make up a substantial portion of teaching staff—rising from 20% in the early 1980s to reports suggesting they could comprise up to 75% in some institutions.

The adjunct model is characterized by lower pay and fewer benefits compared to tenured positions, which raises concerns about educational quality and faculty commitment. Critics argue that this shift undermines the traditional academic environment, reducing opportunities for research and community engagement among educators. Organizations like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the New Faculty Majority advocate for adjunct rights and aim to improve working conditions for these instructors. As the landscape of higher education continues to evolve, the role and perception of adjunct faculty remain critical topics of discussion within the academic community.

Published in: 2021

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Subject Terms

Adjunct Teaching

This article briefly examines the history of adjunct teaching and presents statistics on decreasing tenured positions and increasing adjunct positions over the last several decades. It looks into the reasons why American higher education has transitioned to the "adjunct model" and makes a comparison of salaries and benefits between tenured professors and adjunct professors. The article then briefly explores the position of some of the largest associations and organizations concerning adjunct teaching, and it explains some of the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the adjunct model in American higher education.

Keywords

Adjunct

American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

Community College

National Education Association (NEA)

Outsourcing

Professors

Tenure

Overview

Definition & History of Adjunct Teaching

Traditionally, college professors had a clear-cut path for their profession, a path that led to a rewarding and well-paid career as a tenured professor; but this is becoming less the case each year. As Keels (2005) points out, an increasing number of teaching assistants—who accept a low-paying stipend in order to complete their doctoral degrees—find themselves searching for far fewer available tenure-track positions. Keels notes that the current generation of Ph.D. graduates are finding out "they have become part of a growing contingent on campuses across the country—the adjunct professor" ( p. 3). Essentially, the American system of higher education is seeing a new class of educators, a class that will replace the former class with its system of tenure. This new class is also part of a new business model that colleges and universities are increasingly using.

The etymology of the word "adjunct" indicates that something is being joined to another thing; the meaning within the educational system is that a teacher is being joined to the full-time or tenured staff to teach additional courses. Mann and Hochenedel (2003) offer a standard definition.

The term "adjunct," used in the United States to describe sessional lecturers, is most revealing. It means "a thing added to something else, but secondary or not essential to it," or "a person connected with another as a helper or subordinate" (p. 111).

An adjunct teacher is added to a college's tenured faculty to teach extra courses. Mcardle (2002) points out that originally, an adjunct teaching arrangement was a special arrangement generally for professionals who wanted to teach a few courses so as to give students an inside point of view for the student's profession of interest. Mcardle gives several examples: "the successful sculptor who lectured passionately about art, the lawyer who taught criminal justice, the stockbroker who described her daily work to business majors" (p. 25). Thus, traditionally an adjunct lecturer was usually someone with a full-time career who probably wanted to teach university students more for recognition and prestige than for money, or perhaps to "give something back." In any case, adjunct lecturers were the exceptions within an educational system filled with tenure-track professors.

However, in the 1990's a quite different type of adjunct instructor began to teach at universities. This new type of adjunct usually had earned a Ph.D. and had excellent credentials, but could not find a full-time teaching job. Mcardle notes that, "because there's now a glut of these part-time instructors, they'll work cheap, earning a fraction of what full-time professors make" (p. 26). Also, because colleges and universities are facing difficult budget constraints, these schools may be more inclined to hire adjuncts to save money.

The number of adjuncts versus the number of tenured professors has seen a dramatic shift in percentages in the last several decades. Mcardle notes that in the early 1980s, only about 20 percent of all courses across the country were taught by adjuncts while the rest were taught by full-time, tenured faculty (2002, p. 26). Feldman and Turnley (2001) also note that, in 1968, only 20 percent of all faculty were adjuncts, whereas in 2001 the number had doubled to 40 percent (p. 1). In 2006, Benton noted that as of 2003 the number of adjuncts had reached 46 percent (p. 10). Bousquet (2009) said that "at the present rate of decline, the next two decades will see the percentage of tenured and tenure-track professors plunge into the single digits" ("The Faculty of the Future," p. 4). Thus, in fifty years time—from 1980 to 2030—American colleges and universities will most likely have gone from 80 percent tenured faculty to 10 percent—a 70 percent decrease. Indeed, a 2009 survey showed that 75 percent of faculty in higher education were adjunct (Coalition on the Academic Workforce, 2012).

Wilson (2009) examines a typical community college and shows this same pattern occurring. She notes that, as full-time professors retire from their departments, the school has replaced these tenured professors with adjuncts. Consequently, "the adjunct ranks have swelled to 80 as the number of full-timers has dropped to only 10" (p. 22). Clearly, the career path that educators traditionally took to become well-paid tenured faculty is coming to an end; or, at best, tenured professors will soon become the exceptions within the educational system. Considering the significant changes that are influencing the entire system of higher education in America, we should examine why these changes are occurring, and what these changes may mean to American society.

Further Insights

Why Adjunct Teaching Has Increased

As to why a significant shift in the numbers of adjunct versus tenured professors is occurring, most experts would agree that economics is the primary reason. As Keels points out, "shifting conditions in the academy account for the increasing number of doctorates teaching in adjunct roles rather than in full-time, tenure-track positions, and much of it has to do with economics" (2005, p. 4). Mann and Hochenedel observe that this economic change in education has already been given a name, the “adjunct model,” though the term is not yet pervasively used. The write that

In recent years, some institutions in the United States have moved to what is poetically termed "the adjunct model," in which most if not all of the faculty in an institution are secondary and inessential, which is to say they are allowed to teach only a few classes and are not paid benefits (2003, p. 111).

The Adjunct Model

Thus, the term " adjunct model" will probably be used to denote the new business model that has already deeply taken root within American higher education. Essentially, the adjunct model is an extension of the outsourcing phenomenon that has been occurring throughout the American corporate economy in the past several decades. A general rule of outsourcing is that it significantly reduces costs for the business or institution that outsources, but that reduction is always at the expense of the person who is being outsourced; educational outsourcing of adjuncts is no exception. P. D. Lesko, publisher of the Adjunct Advocate, makes the point that "colleges tell you its for flexibility," so that there are enough teachers for quickly adding courses when necessary, "but, if you look behind the flexibility, you'll see that they're not paying a pro rata salary or benefits. They're saving a lot of money" (cited in Mcardle, 2002, p. 27).

Wilson (2009) looks at how much the educational institutions are saving. She notes that at Oakton, a community college near Chicago, full-time faculty members who taught five courses per semester earned on average $86,000 annually. The adjuncts at Oakton were allowed to teach up to three classes each semester. In 2009, for teaching three courses per semester, the adjuncts earned at most around $21,000 annually. Plus, "like other colleges, Oakton does not provide adjuncts with subsidized health insurance" (p. 14). But Oakton was actually not typical in terms of pay; it paid much more to its adjuncts than did other colleges and universities. At the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, adjuncts received a more typical sum for teaching a semester course. Dartmouth is a microcosm of what is happening in universities across America, which are doing what they can to get their tenured professors to retire; they then hire more adjuncts to replace the much more expensive tenured professors. At Dartmouth in 2002, 10 percent of the faculty retired as part of the school's early-retirement program. One Dartmouth administrator succinctly narrated the rest of the situation:

“At the same time, the state chopped the budget, with more cuts to come. While the school doesn't like to hire too many adjuncts, it has no choice,” says Richard J. Panofsky, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs. The university pays an assistant professor $47,796 for a three-course teaching load per semester, and adjuncts are much cheaper. But Panofsky says the school does its best to treat adjuncts well. It pays $3,000 per course to adjuncts, as part of a negotiated union contract. "We just can't afford to pay pro rata," he says (cited in Mcardle, 2002, p. 29).

Thus, universities save enormous amounts of money by outsourcing their courses to adjuncts. Whether or not colleges and universities really are being forced into this new economic model is a question for additional research, and cannot be adequately answered here, but the savings are without question.

Wilson quotes the president of Oakton Community College, who claimed that Oakton cannot afford to change its teaching arrangement (largely the adjunct business model). According to the president's calculation, the college has saved around $20 million per year by outsourcing courses to adjuncts (2009, p. 23).

Most likely, there is no other way to cut costs so dramatically. Mann and Hochenedel point out that most colleges and universities claim they are nonprofit institutions, but as the percentage of adjuncts increases, these nonprofit schools increasingly look like the schools that are intentionally arranged to maximize profits. They give as an example the University of Phoenix, which they note is "a hugely successful, for-profit, stock offering business staffed entirely by adjuncts" … "the University of Phoenix has become highly successful and profitable by refusing to hire more than one full-time faculty member per department and requiring its faculty to work at night, which is convenient for their working students" (2003, p. 121). Educational expert Bousquet, who was asked to predict the future of American higher education, agreed:

In short, we already know what the future academic workplace will look like. It will closely resemble many of today's for-profits and the community colleges with which they compete—operating without tenure or with tenure reserved for a small group of faculty administrators in charge of hiring, supervising, and setting curriculum for a part-time staff, whose members typically lack doctorates and earn only a few thousand dollars ("The Faculty," 2009, p. 7).

Viewpoints

Consequences of the Adjunct Model

Professors as Administrators

The above points out one of the fundamental changes that occurs with the adoption of the adjunct business model. The tenured or full-time faculty will be a small group that will take on many more administrative functions for the institution. In the past, tenured professors spent much of their time doing research, but the tenured professors of today and the future will be administrators for their institutions. As Gwen Bradley, a member of the American Association of University Professors' Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession points out, "Adjuncts require less of a commitment from an institution … these are pure teaching positions, so institutions don't have to pay for research. It's more cost effective for universities" (cited in Keels, 2005, p. 5). Thus, the consequence of decreasing the number of tenured professors will be "more and more committee work … and a steady stream of more and more nakedly managerial responsibilities with respect to the nontenurable majority…" ("The Faculty," 2009, p. 13). As Bousquet puts it, "If you are tenured and feel this intensified service burden already, imagine what it will be like 20 years from now when the proportion of tenured and tenure track is 8 percent, not 25 percent" ("The Faculty," 2009, p. 14). Additionally, it seems that research at universities will decrease significantly, and if we were to examine the present and future of research, we would most likely find that research is and will be increasingly outsourced by companies that specialize in providing academic research to universities. And who are the academics writing these outsourced papers? Probably the new class of low-paid educational adjuncts.

Less Community Involvement

Jacobe (2006) points out another consequence of the adjunct model. She argues that adjuncts are generally not as committed or close to the schools where they teach, especially since they often teach at several schools in order to work full time. This is probably why Jacobe observes that, "[adjuncts] cannot contribute fully to the life of their departments or to the education of their students" (p. 9) … "the increasingly contingent academic labor force reduces the influence of faculty—important contributors to educational quality—on the structure and function of higher education" (p. 16).

Low Pay

Feldman and Turnley (2001) conducted survey research to examine the positive and negative features of the adjunct system. Their findings were that "the most positive aspects of non-tenure-track jobs involve the work itself and relationships with professional colleagues." In other words, adjuncts most like about their work the rewards of teaching within a field they have studied and enjoy; they also like being around colleagues who also work within the same field. However, it should be noted that these positive features are also found within tenure-track positions, while the negative features that the authors find with adjunct teaching are not part of tenure-track positions. Adjuncts observe, "in contrast, the poor financial packages and lack of promotional opportunities are clearly the most dissatisfying aspects of these positions," and conclude that, quite often, adjuncts decide to do their jobs "because of their attachment to their profession rather than for the low economic rewards these positions offer" (Feldman & Turnley, 2001, p. 12).

Low Prestige

In addition to the low pay, many adjuncts complain that they are not well regarded in the academic community, though this will likely change when 90 percent of university lecturers are adjuncts. In 2009, a new organization—the New Faculty Majority—formed to represent and advocate for adjunct, or contingent, faculty alone (New Faculty Majority, 2013). Its mission statement:

NFM is dedicated to improving the quality of higher education by advancing professional equity and securing academic freedom for all adjunct and contingent faculty. For this purpose, NFM engages in education and advocacy to provide economic justice and academic equity for all college faculty. NFM is committed to creating stable, equitable, sustainable, non-exploitative academic environments that promote more effective teaching, learning, and research (2013).

Even with increased professional exposure and organization, most tenured professors and their administrations seem to consider adjuncts inferior to tenured professors. As Daniel Maguire, a professor at Marquette University observes, "I like to say we've divided the academy into the royals and the slaves. The royals are the tenured faculty who have the wonderful schedules—thanks to the adjuncts—and the good salaries and health benefits" (cited in June, 2009, p. 13). Dedman and Pearch (2004) make a similar observation, pointing out that adjunct professors are perceived as a "reserve migrant work force to employ as needed, usually on a moment's notice" (p. 28). They also argue that adjuncts "have become the scapegoats of higher education—a cheap labor pool" (p. 28). Wilson quotes another adjunct instructor who sums up the feeling of many adjuncts: "We are not part of the actual family here … It is like we are servants" (2009, p. 17). Mann and Hochenedel claim that many departments and administrations deal with adjuncts in a way that they would never tolerate themselves. Adjuncts are treated poorly because departments and administrators believe that there are "significant differences between themselves, tenured (or tenure-track) faculty, and adjunct faculty…" (2003, p. 112).

This is most likely true since there needs to be a justification for tenured faculty earning around four times as much as adjunct faculty. Angelo-Gene Monaco, then-associate vice president for human resources and employee relations at the University of Akron, argues that accrediting agencies contribute to the perception that adjuncts are far inferior to tenured professors. He reasons, "the only way to defend the highly paid tenure track is declare lower-paid nontenure folks less competent" (cited in Selingo, 2008, p. 8). According to Mann and Hochenedel, one of the most important associations in American academia, the National Education Association (NEA), also supports the idea of a significant qualitative difference:

Part-time faculty members are different than full-time faculty members in two important ways. First, they do not have as much education. Second, they use more limited class-room methods. Part-time faculty members in community colleges teach a smaller range of classes and do not have the same access to institutional resources and developmental opportunities. They should not be considered to be equivalent replacement for full-time faculty (cited in Mann & Hochenedel, 2003, p. 116).

However, Dedman and Pearch observe that the NEA seems to be conflicted whenever they deal with issues relating to adjunct faculty. The organization "supports the few groups of adjuncts who have organized bargaining units, [but] it also decries the loss of full-time positions" (2004, p. 24). Several organizations—the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the NEA—"all claim to represent the interests of nontenured faculty members … but at the same time they push colleges to decrease their reliance on that group of employees" (Selingo, 2008, p. 9). In 2009, the AAUP issued a draft report that urged universities to offer adjunct faculty members tenure-track positions. June claims the reason is that university faculties across the nation are "falling apart" (2009, p. 1), though the reason may be as much that the AAUP recognizes that tenured positions—and the much higher pay and benefits—are altogether disappearing, which threatens the future of all professors and the AAUP. The growing use and dependency of schools on adjunct faculty "should concern faculty on all sides of the tenure line, college and university administrators, and anyone else worried about the quality of higher education and the academic workplace" (Jacobe, 2006, p. 9). Benton arrives at this same point of view:

Parents, legislators, administrators—are you reading this? If you want educated, disciplined graduates who are willing to work hard and become productive citizens—who will not disgrace you—then you have to reverse the de-professionalization of college faculty members. And that means saving tenure before it is downsized out of existence for the sake of bigger athletic facilities, fancier dining halls, and better campus landscaping (2006, p. 22).

And according to June, "scholarly associations, unions, lawmakers, and even some administrators" have been warning us for years about the negative consequences if we "turn the professoriate into an oasis of faculty members with tenure surrounded by adjuncts in a desert of poor pay, no academic freedom, and no job security" (2009, p. 2).

However, it seems likely that the adjunct model will continue to replace the previous tenure model in America's higher education institutions, and that "there is little hope of seeing the contribution of adjuncts recognized with an increase in salary that would be proportional to full-time staff" (Dedman & Pearch, 2004, p. 31). Fundamentally, it seems that money is behind the destruction of the tenure system and the resulting growth of the adjunct model. Still, some researchers are calling for professional societies, such as the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association—and other higher-education-related organizations—to actively embrace adjuncts for the sake of both the adjuncts and the students they teach (Kezar & Maxey, 2013).

Terms & Concepts

Adjunct Professor: A teacher at college level who is not a full-time professor and is considered "off-the-tenure-track." Adjunct professors are contracted to teach courses each semester, and they are not usually guaranteed teaching work beyond their current teaching semester. Also, adjuncts are generally paid much less than tenured staff, and they are not paid any additional benefits such as health insurance or employer contributions for retirement.

American Association of University Professors (AAUP): An academic organization of professors founded by American educator John Dewey in 1915. The AAUP's mission statement is "to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good."

American Federation of Teachers (AFT): The second largest labor union of teachers in the United States. The organization represents higher education faculty (including professors, non–tenure-track faculty, and graduate student employees), school nurses and others working in the healthcare profession, school librarians, and other school workers such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

Community Colleges: Usually publicly funded educational institutions that offer associate's degrees, which are two-year college degrees that can then be used toward a four-year bachelor's degree. Also, community colleges offer training programs that allow students to enter jobs that require some level of college education but not a full four-year degree.

National Education Association (NEA): The largest labor union in the United States for representing public school teachers and faculty and staff at colleges and universities. The NEA has about 3.2 million members and lobbies state and federal legislators for funding and other resources. The NEA also aims to influence public education policy, and it frequently initiates legal actions to protect academic freedom.

Outsourcing: The practice of a company or other institution contracting work with another company or individuals to provide services previously performed by in-house employees. Adjunct professors are outsourced educators because colleges pay adjuncts to teach through contracts for each course taught.

Tenure: Traditionally, tenure is the primary system of employment that universities and colleges use for full-time professors with senior job titles such as professor or associate professor. However, most universities in the United States have decreased their tenured positions and now use nontenured adjunct professors to supplement the work of tenured professors.

Bibliography

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