The Realities of Being an Adjunct
Adjunct faculty face numerous barriers to achieving equity in a university setting. Beyond the usual stresses associated with teaching at a university, adjunct faculty have to deal with working a part-time jobwith low pay, little to no benefits, high job insecurity, and limited influence at their institutions.6 Adjunct faculty may also experience feeling inferior to their peers. Critics contend that adjuncts reduce the educational quality in the classroom because they usually have less teaching experience than full-time faculty.7And yet, adjuncts are a vital part of IU’s teaching mission, bringing in new faculty with diverse professional backgrounds to benefit the students. And research shows that adjunct faculty may in fact enhance the learning experiences for students.8 While there are cost benefits to the University to employ adjunct faculty, employing adjuncts as a money saving tactic – as some universities are accused of doing – reflects negatively not only on the institution, but also on the adjunct faculty.
A tenured professor makes between $60,000-$100,000 a year, compared to the U.S. average of $2,700 a course adjunct faculty are offered.9 At Indiana University, each department decides what adjunct faculty make per credit. For example, if an adjunct receives $2,100 per credit and were offered one three credit course per semester for the year, they will make $12,600. That would mean that an adjunct faculty teaching the maximum number of credits (9 credits per semester during the school year and 6 credits during the summer) could make around $50,400 annually, without benefits.10 Additionally, adjuncts usually operate on only semester-long contracts, thus job insecurity is high.11 In some cases, adjunct faculty are offered contracts only weeks before a semester begins, leading to feelings of insecurity and fear of unemployment. This also limits their preparation time, making it difficult to create a syllabus or incorporate updates and changes in the subject from the previous semester or year.
Some literature has suggested that women adjuncts face challenges with the absence of a work-family balance that would allow for women to advance while having a family.12 Women adjuncts report appreciating the part-time work as mothers but often encounter the glass ceiling in their roles.13 Moreover, the intersectionality of race and gender in the workplace compounds the experience. Black women in academia are most commonly hired in lower-ranking, non-tenured positions, such as adjuncts, part-time instructors, or lecturers.14 These roles offer the lowest pay and provide limited opportunities for participation in college governance. 15 Notably, in addressing the academic segregation of Black women—who are disproportionately placed in precarious, easily exploited positions—Sylvia M. DeSantis, in Academic Apartheid: Waging the Adjunct War, writes that Black female adjunct faculty do the invisible work for the institution and that no better academic pathways and supports are presented to them.16 DeSantis’s argument underscores the urgent need for greater support and access for Black female adjunct faculty, who play a fundamental role in university teaching yet remain undervalued and under-resourced.
