Good News: Inside Higher Ed publishes career advice for adjunct faculty
My cautionary essay, “Advice to a Friend on Becoming an Adjunct,” has been published by Inside Higher Education.
The idea and structure for the essay came from reading Benjamin Franklin’s “Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress,” which dates back to 1745. I saw similarities between Franklin’s words and present-day discussions of adjunct faculty. You may remember one of the Franklin’s oft-quoted lines, “And as in the dark all cats are grey…”
DEFINITION: Adjunct faculty may be called lecturers, faculty associates, or similar titles. Adjunct or contingent faculty are contracted to teach one or more university courses each semester. While they are not on the tenure track, adjunct faculty hold advanced degrees in their subject areas, and teaching may be their full-time job.
I began drafting this essay after receiving an adjunct teaching contract with a per-course pay rate so low that it was similar to my first teaching contract in 2000.
Regrets surged at having stayed with adjunct teaching and its attendant fears of losing full-time work (and health insurance) every fall and spring. Looking back, I would have advised myself to exit the academic treadmill of year to year or semester to semester contracts and re-enter the ranks of higher ed. classified or professional staff—jobs that offer more stable schedules, competitive incomes, and maybe even raises.
In any case, the Inside Higher Ed essay offers advice I wish someone had told me (or that I had listened to). If you’re interested in some of my sources, I’d like to share the following:
Sources (partial list)
The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission, University of Chicago Press book
The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission by Herb Childress, a former dean at the Boston Architectural College, was published by the Chicago University Press in 2019. The book offers “Recommendations for Survival in the Current Climate,” including that grad students should consult the National Research Council’s assessment of doctoral programs. “Be cautious about applying to any school not in the top 10 percent of its discipline,” writes Childress. “Lots of doctoral programs can give you a wonderful intellectual experience; only a few of the are likely to give you a chance in the [higher ed.] labor market.” To further gauge one’s prospects for a career in academia, Childress’s self-test, “The Academic Career Calibration Protocol,” may feel like an ice-water dunk.
“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer,” American Association of University Professors article
“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer” by James Monks, an economics professor at the University of Richmond, Va., was published in AAUP’s Academe in July-August 2009. The article includes a plethora of economic, demographic, and related data about contingent faculty. “[P]art-time non-tenure track faculty earn between 22 and 40 percent less than tenure track assistant professors on an hourly basis,” writes Monk in citing his earlier article, “The Relative Earnings of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education,” which was published by the Journal of Labor Research in 2007. Monks’s earning percentages seem high, based on my years in the adjunct world at Wisconsin and Arizona universities.
“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” Writing Program Administration article
“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” by Ann M. Penrose, an English professor at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, was published in Writing Program Administration in 2012. Among Penrose’s points is a discussion of how a profession is defined to include growth and development. She asks whether contingent instructors are members of a profession/discipline given their often-narrow opportunities for growth. “But under the conditions of contingent employment, ‘professional development’ can easily be interpreted as a euphemism for brainwashing or remediation….,” writes Penrose. Brainwashing is a strong word, but my professional development opportunities related almost solely to practical concerns, such as university technology adaptations, curriculum changes, or course development. “Under this interpretation,” Penrose writes, “professional development activities are intended to regulate and regularize and thus present a clear challenge to an experienced faculty member’s autonomy and professional identity.”
Other Sources
Publications regularly covering issues concerning adjunct university instructors, such as unionization efforts, include:
Melissa Olson-Petrie 
From Nadine Bopp:
Your recent article on your bias against adjunct college instructors is extremely offensive. Having filled this role at three prestigious private colleges in Chicago for 19 years was a very rewarding career experience. I was able to design all of the courses I taught, had excellent rapport with my students and was afforded generous remuneration.
Students flocked to my courses and intimated they were better than those taught by tenured faculty.
The adjunct role has much more freedom in their teaching as it is our choice to stay with the college, to continue working in the real world and keep courses current.
On the other side, my only bad college experiences as an undergraduate was with those tenured instructors who were awful teachers who did not care for student outcomes. They only taught as a prerequisite to do paid research.
The adjunct fills another special role, and that is to keep the college costs affordable for students and keep otherwise failing institutions afloat. The bloated pay of administrators and tenure faculty is the causal factor we are seeing many liberal arts colleges closing.
Please revise your opinion and open your mind to the many positive aspects of being an adjunct instructor
My hope is to encourage adjunct faculty to consider their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities within academia and beyond. Also, I hoped to illustrate some of the human costs borne by adjunct instructors, especially in institutions facing budget cuts and restructuring.
The increasingly “tiered workforce” of academia has become something to be avoided, according to a New York Times article on the Writer’s Guild of America strike (“How TV Writing Became a Dead-End Job” published on July 20, 2023). Adjunct- and tenure-type tiers seem to be showing up beyond academia, in law firms, tech companies, writers’ rooms, and more.
Thanks for your feedback.
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From a commenter who asked me not to publish their name:
I want to thank you for writing this article. Reading this article gave me the validation I have been seeking for some time. I have been working as an adjunct for two years, teaching at two community colleges that are almost an hour from home. I’ve lost classes before a semester began and one of my courses was at risk this semester. I have been going back and forth wondering if this job is for me and just this last week, I had been really thinking about making the change, but didn’t know if my thoughts made sense. I cannot express how grateful I am that you wrote this. I was searching for answers and processing so much, and cried when I read this because I felt heard and seen. Thank you.
I’m sorry to hear about your courses being at risk of cancellation. I think all adjunct instructors have been there at one time or another.
Teaching college is rewarding (and sometimes fun) work, but the financial risks can be overwhelming.
If I were to look back, I would urge myself to diversify by work portfolio. In other words, adjunct teaching would be one of two or three different sources of income, similar to how a 401k balances stock, bonds, cash, etc. The exception, of course, would be the increasingly rare universities that offer adjuncts job security with long-term contracts, decent earnings, benefits, etc.