Adjuncts in Higher Education in the United States

Although teaching remains the province of tenured and tenure-track professors in some elite colleges and universities in the United States, this arrangement is increasingly anomalous in many other institutions of higher learning. “Contingent professors” (here used interchangeably with the term “adjuncts”) refers to anyone teaching at the tertiary level who is not in the tenure stream. This entry refers principally to those with higher degrees who are paid by the course. The shift away from the tenure system may not have been as rapid as is often thought (it dates back at least some decades), but it is a sweeping change. Contingents now constitute a significant majority of academics. In 1969, over 78 percent of faculty were tenured or tenure-track; by 2009, that figure had declined to about 33 percent. Research faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows are not included in those figures; if they were, the overall representation of adjunct or contingent faculty in higher education would be considerably higher. Most contingent professors teach for a living; some may hope to land a tenure-track position. Others have full-time jobs and teach out of pleasure; yet others, having reached the end of their careers, prefer to teach at a more leisurely pace. Some do it for a short time, whereas others make a lifelong career of it. A considerable portion of non-tenured teachers in the United States are international graduate students or postdoctoral scholars, many of whom have financial, immigration, and communication challenges. What these educators have in common is that their jobs are insecure and can be terminated without review or explanation. The pay is low, sometimes close to minimum wage if examined on an hourly basis; more often than not, those paid by the course receive no benefits. Once hailed as the road to equality, higher education is now imparted in a context of stark inequity—a two-tier system in which some have a job for life, and others can be dismissed at any time. When the policy of paying faculty by the course is defended by institutional leaders, it is often with reference to the purported goal of achieving a certain nimbleness in matching the workforce with changing enrollments, the need to balance budgets, and an alleged surplus of scholars with advanced degrees. However, the inequity in pay, benefits, and working conditions is so stark that discussion of adjuncts has moved beyond the mere denunciation of their working conditions to an increased interest in improving those conditions. Nevertheless, the status of adjuncts raises many questions. How does this policy affect student learning? What does it mean that most professors now lack traditional academic protections of freedom of speech? Is it acceptable that the majority of academics are excluded from institutional decisionmaking while also lacking any clear path toward advancement on the job? Are unions addressing the needs of adjunct professors?