The Philosophers' Cocoon

3 responses to “How will adjuncting after an MA look to PhD admissions committees?”

1. 3rd year PhD student

   February 28, 2025

   As a 3rd year PhD student who taught for a few years at a community college with my MA before enrolling in a PhD program, I think it’s worth doing. Not because admissions committees care. Teaching experience is not the kind of thing that will ever make or break an application to a PhD program. But it’s worth doing because you get paid (meager sums, sure), you build up teaching experience and can hit the ground running earlier once you’re asked to teach later, and perhaps the biggest reason is that nothing forces you to learn something more deeply than having to explain it. I read a specific article once or twice prior to teaching, but then once I taught it, I saw it in a whole new light. It’s where I got the idea that eventually became the dissertation I’m working on. I count my “gap years” teaching with my MA before pursuing PhD life as highly valuable.

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2. LeiterOK Admit Veteran

   February 28, 2025

   I don’t think we’d care much about this one way or another. I can’t see how it would hurt (frankly I doubt I would even notice).
   I doubt it would help much – (1) lots of M.A. students have experience teaching during their program, so it’s not that special; (2) we assume we can provide you all the teaching training you will need, to become a good teacher (3) even though we send most of our students to teaching-heavy jobs, (oddly, perhaps-) we tend to emphasize people’s potential as philosophical thinkers in admissions (figuring, I suppose, that we can train them as teachers) …
   It could potentially be of some value later, on the job market, particularly if you wind up in a program where you don’t teach must as instructor-of-record; you will be able to say that you have some such experience, which is, for the purposes of some jobs, much better than none.

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3. Trevor Hedberg

   February 28, 2025

   It definitely wouldn’t look bad to have some adjunct teaching experience in this situation, but it is also unlikely to make much of a difference in how someone’s application is evaluated. The bigger benefit, as others have suggested, would come in the form of more teaching experience prior to going on the job market (assuming one does go for an academic career).

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