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Life as adjunct faculty: can adjuncts flourish?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am generally curious about the life of an adjunct, and in particular adjuncts who have other jobs and teach philosophy as a way to supplement their income (i.e., who are not trying to make a full-time living as an adjunct).

How much do adjuncts make per class? (I know it depends, but I couldn't find much info about this online surprisingly so more info would be helpful)

What other jobs have people combined with adjuncting?

Has adjuncting been meaningful? Demoralizing? Both? So demoralizing as to make it not worth considering at all?

I ask because I could see myself perhaps pursuing multiple part-time/freelance jobs in various fields to make ends meet if I don't get a full-time academic job, and I wonder how feasible/prudent it would be to consider adjuncting. Does the flourishing adjunct exist?

These are all good questions. Are any current or former adjunct faculty willing to weigh in?

Posted in ,

11 responses to “Life as adjunct faculty: can adjuncts flourish?”

  1. AnAnon

    At my institution (a community college in a major urban area but not a famously expensive one,) an adjunct with a PhD would make a touch over $3300 for a standard 3-hour course.(For those without a PhD, pay would be a few hundred dollars less, varying depending on how much graduate coursework one has in addition to the MA.) Whether that would be worth it as a supplement to another job would, I imagine, depend in part on whether you’re doing it purely to supplement income or whether you also have some sort of “teaching philosophy” itch you’re trying to keep scratched.
    A lot of adjuncts teach online courses, which are less time-intensive than face-to-face once you’ve got them. So they may be higher value in terms of supplementing income, but I suspect they’d do a much worse job of scratching the itch.

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  2. anon

    The people I have met of who are happiest with long-term part-time teaching positions are people for whom the teaching work was zero parts of their attempt to making ends meet, rather than a part of it, if that makes sense. But maybe there are other scenarios out there too and I just haven’t met the workers.
    One was a former city councilor who would teach political science courses about the mechanics of municipal politics and how they relate with the provincial and federal levels. Another was a retired high-powered finance-type person who had done a PhD and who found teaching the occasional course to be fulfilling.
    One place – at least in Canada – where you can reliably find salary information for per-course teaching appointments is in collective agreement documents, which are on university as well as union pages.

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  3. the partner of a former-adjunct

    The flourishing adjunct that you alude to is a lawyer or business person who makes lots of money outside the academy and wants an affiliation with a university, and thus enjoys teaching one course per year. So, the fact that the pay is typically under $ 4,000 matters little. But the large army of people working as adjuncts, teaching multiple courses, sometimes at numerous different colleges, are not flourishing. Where I taught before, the union managed to ensure that the college had to pay adjuncts who teach three or more courses on a different salary scale (one closer to a full time faculty member). The college then responded by capping adjunct courses loads to two courses per term, thus ensuring that they still cost the college very little.

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  4. grad student adjunct

    I’ve done a good bit of adjuncting during grad school, and I’m also considering adjuncting for a while after (if more permanent prospects don’t pan out). So I can answer some of your questions:
    At the two institutions I’ve adjuncted for, I’ve made between 5 and 6 thousand per class (a helpful boost to my graduate stipend). I have a friend at another institution, though, who gets paid half of that per class. So, I’d wager that 5-6 is on the high end of what you can expect.
    Whether adjuncting is right for you will depend on how you answer, e.g., how rewarding do you find teaching (esp. introductory classes only)? Would you be content putting all of your energy into teaching as opposed to your own research? Do you enjoy being involved in (and feeling valued by!) your department(s)/institution(s)? (I’ve felt a lack of connection to departments I’ve adjuncted for, but this might also be mostly my own fault for not getting involved.) Would you be okay with no prospects for promotion/advancement? Can you depend on someone else for insurance, etc.?
    In my own case, I don’t think the adjuncting option would be too demoralizing for a year or two, but I can see it wearing me out if it’s what I have to do for the long haul.

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  5. Michel

    The courses I’ve adjuncted paid between 4300-7200USD, but that was in Canada.
    My partner adjuncted for as little as 1400 in the US south.

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  6. seven-year itch

    I’ll echo what others have said. There are indeed happy adjuncts, but the happy ones make up a tiny sliver of the overall adjunct population. Most of the happy ones are people who have other comfortable careers and teach for fun on the side (as @anon says above). I’ve known tech-types, non-profit workers, the independently wealthy, and even ski instructors who “went back to” or otherwise “stuck with” philosophy by doing some adjuncting on the side.
    Some rare institutions pay and treat their adjuncts well. The vast majority do not. As for pay, I’ve seen as little as $1.5k per class (and even unpaid adjuncting!) The University of California system, or at least a part of it, pays the best that I’ve heard at about $9k per class. My anecdotal sense is that most places pay around $3k per class, and that about $4.5k should be considered better than average. Again, this is anecdotal.

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  7. FormerAdjunct

    I adjuncted for a bit at my grad department, which wasn’t too bad. Essentially, I made back my graduate stipend doing a 4/3, but I had to get Obamacare for insurance. I was used to living on that kind of money and didn’t need to move.
    That said, I can’t imagine moving to take adjunct positions, adjuncting at multiple institutions to make ends meet, or maintaining a decent lifestyle on that income long-term. It was a useful stopgap for the time, but I wouldn’t go back to it.

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  8. sahpa

    @partner: was the college’s response not entirely predictable by the union pushing for this change? color me unsurprised.

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  9. Canadian Sessional Instructor

    I work as a sessional instructor at the Canadian equivalent of an R1. I do this in addition to a full-time position in research services at the same institution.
    My primary position is well-paid, so I’m under no financial pressure to teach, but I love to be in the classroom and take every opportunity I get to teach courses. The current rate per 3-credit hour course at my institution is around $6000 CAD (though this will likely increase soon with a new CBA), so teaching a few courses per year is a really nice supplement to my salary.
    Am I flourishing? I think reasonably so. While I still lament the fact that I have not (yet) been successful on the market for tenure-track jobs, my current position has turned out to be a pretty nice consolation prize. One unique aspect of this position is that my employers see it as an asset that I continue to be involved in teaching and research, and have been incredibly supportive as a result, e.g., by offering flexibility in terms of fitting teaching into my schedule, and even providing me with a small PD fund to support my research.
    I’m not sure how replicable this type of situation is, though if you’re wondering about possible jobs to pair with adjuncting, don’t overlook non-academic positions within universities. Many of these are well-paid and come attached to a variety of benefits that we sometimes fail to appreciate in our tunnel vision for full-time academic employment.

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  10. Anonimal

    Flourishing is a thick concept that requires a fair amount of unpacking, yeah? That said, at first blush, ‘flourishing’ doesn’t obviously translate to material wealth or comfort, nor does is it obviously allow for a generalized response, IMHO. What we should be focusing on here is not the limit-cases (independent scholars who are already supported and destitute scholars, etc.), but what most folks experience
    So relative to generic experience, what I can say is the following:
    (1) It’s not uncommon for staff in European universities to be leaders in their field and yet not tenured (although they may be on various semi-permanent research contracts). I’ve met a number of researchers in Europe who’s work is foundational for an area (translations, historical work without which serious scholarship would not occur) who are part of the precariat, but find their work fulfilling.
    (2) Similarly, a non-trivial number of North American (and increasingly UK) Universities generate operational funds by creating an underclass of ‘teachers’/’service staff’ to ensure basic department offerings. The simple fact that these needs would justify a full-time hire — that remains unfulfilled for whatever reason — satisfies Marx’s analysis of extracting ‘surplus labour’ from a vulnerable group. These positions do not allow anyone to actually pay the bills, despite being essential to the fiscal viability of the unit. The fact that departmental Chairs and Deans of Schools don’t push back on this is, IMHO, a scandal.
    Depending on the vagaries between (1) and (2), I suspect that most of us would suggest that adjunct positions are designed to preclude the minimal conditions of flourishing* because they don’t allow adjuncts to meet basic human needs or improve their situations. Adjuncts are (in a generic sense) neither respected for their work nor compensated fairly — and yet many departments that employ them would not function without them. Moreover, being an adjunct rarely provides one with the means to improve one’s situation.
    * As a footnote: adjunct positions used to be ’emergency’ roles or roles designed to give grad students teaching experience. The simple fact that these roles have migrated to floating budgetary lines based on enrolment tells us everything we need to know about them.

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  11. Derek Bowman

    I loved teaching, including mostly intro classes, and I found adjuncting incredibly demoralizing, in ways I’m sure I’ve shared repeatedly in threads here.
    My first semester adjuncting I made less money as the primary instructor for 70 students per term (2-2, 35 students per class, intro ethics) than I made the previous year on my grad stipend as a TA for 20-50 students per term, and with no access to health insurance.
    Later, I went from adjuncting and almost quitting to a full-time VAP, then back to being offered (and rejecting) adjuncting at the same institution. This involved being offered half the teaching load (2-2 vs 4-4 for the VAP) for about 1/4 the salary (so half the per-class rate) for teaching the exact same classes.
    As someone who loved teaching and who believed in the value of philosophical and humanistic inquiry and of a liberal arts education, I found the start mismatch between the rhetoric of the university and the material conditions of teaching simply unbearable. How could I continue to profess to students that this type of learning would help them to reflect seriously on their own values and bring those reflections to bear on their lives, when those of us who purport to be masters of those disciplines couldn’t do better for ourselves and for one another than to give ourselves over to this broken system? At a certain point, the answer is that I couldn’t, so I stopped.

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