While the stereotype of the college professor might still be an elbow-patched intellectual cozied up in an office, it might be more accurate to place him in his car. A new report from the American Association of University Professors finds that more than 40% of college instructors are part-time, often driving from campus to campus to cobble together enough classes to enable them to pay rent. These types of employees far outnumber tenured and tenure-track faculty, who make up less than a quarter.
This data suggest that the term “precariat” applies well to a significant proportion of college and university professors. Coined by economist Guy Standing, the term is meant to draw attention to the economic fragility of many lower wage workers in today’s labor market. It’s a combination of the word “precarious” and “proletarian,” a word that is used to refer to the working class under capitalism.
Part-time faculty count as part of the precariat because their jobs are contingent (renewed semester to semester), low paid, and bring little or no benefits. Let me put it this way. I just finished my first year as a tenured professor after six years on the tenure track. I teach five classes. An adjunct at a public research university would have to teach more than twenty-three classes to earn my salary (average pay is $3,200/class); someone teaching at community colleges would have to teach more than thirty-three (at $2,250/class). Of course, my salary also reflects research and institutional service, but my hourly wage is obviously far out-of-proportion to that of part-time faculty. Plus I get a wide range of benefits; adjuncts usually get nothing.
When government funding of higher education shrinks, colleges and universities respond by cutting corners where they can. Hiring adjuncts is one way to do that. It’s important to remember, then, that funding cuts hurt not only students; they also hurt jobs.
See also How Many PhDs are Professors?
Via Jordan Weissman at The Atlantic. Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 32
Letta Page — June 18, 2013
It's so crazy to think that institutions both rely on adjuncts *and* do stuff like what's described in today's NYTimes: NYU giving its star profs loans to buy vacation houses http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/nyregion/nyu-gives-stars-loans-for-summer-homes.html?hpw&_r=0
ViktorNN — June 18, 2013
And yet tuitions keep rising across the board. If the cost of labor is going down (i.e. paying teachers), where is all the money going?
For example, tuition at Oxy is 45K (!!!) a year. Where on earth is all that money going?
http://www.oxy.edu/admission-aid/costs
annmariastat — June 18, 2013
I'm one of those adjuncts, but I have a full-time job running a couple of tech companies. I usually teach one class a year in my spare time because I enjoy it. Adjuncts fall in three groups - those like me who see it is kind of a paid hobby , those who work full-time and teach as adjuncts in the (almost certainly vain) hope of being taken on the tenure track and the poor (literally) souls who cobble together a living with adjunct appointments at 3 or 4 campuses.
Even though I am an adjunct, when my precious little one heads off to college in a few years, one of my criteria in selecting a school will be the percentage of full-time faculty.
ps — June 18, 2013
In Virginia at least, state colleges have been instructed by the governor to cut adjuncts' hours so they won't have to give them benefits under the new Obamacare rules. Now they will have to hire one more underpaid, no benefits adjunct for every two they currently have to pick up the classes they are taking away from instructors that are desperate to have them.
Jacob Danger Germain — June 18, 2013
Disgusting.
Larry Charles Wilson — June 18, 2013
I remember the Administration at my college talking up the "business model" for education during the 1990s. Of course this was a 'non-profit' institution but the goal was always a 'surplus.' I remember one of my colleages warned that the number of her students was only paying her salary and that was unacceptable.
A Humanities Professor — June 18, 2013
When we are talking about pay differential between salaried and part-time employees, I think its important to remember that teaching is not the only professional responsibility being compensated. I am a recently tenured professor and bemoan use and abuse of adjuncts as a disposable labor force. However, as a salaried employee with an indefinite contract I am employed to do a huge number of things besides teach, obviously research but also vast amounts of committee service most of which has to do with the future development of the institution and the profession in one way or another. My institution's tenure and promotion materials explicitly suggest that teaching is as little 1/3 my job. To be sure there are mixed messages about how much time I should spend teaching or on other professional responsibilities. We have a 21 credit hour workload (a 3-4 workload, if assigned to only 3 credit courses) and our buy-out rate for external grants is 10% of our salary plus fringe for each 3 credit course. This suggests that money-side of the administration sees teaching as 70% of our overall responsibility. The revenue generation of these buy-out schemes comes from the difference between the 10% of my salary plus fringe the institution collects from the grant source and the $3,750 plus fringe which is then allocated towards a replacement adjunct instructor.
Jenn — June 18, 2013
This is the main reason I decided not to go on to a PhD program after I finished my MA (well, that and profound exhaustion caused by working full time through my BA and nearly full time through my MA). I miss academia. I hope to get that PhD some day. However, I will never rely on it for my primary income.
Epicene Cyborg — June 18, 2013
[...] Professors Join the Precariat. [...]
A sociology professor — June 18, 2013
I'm an adjunct who teaches (mostly) full-time and thankfully only at two different schools, one of which is only online instruction. I consider myself lucky as I have coworkers who teach at the typical 3-4 different campuses and end up spending more on gas than they do on rent. I also don't rely on my income for my sole support- I'm married to a truck driver who makes more than twice what I make. Yes, a truck driver- a man with only a high school education- makes more than twice what I do as a college professor. I love teaching and wouldn't mind taking on the additional requirements of a tenure-track professor, but that seems to be a near impossibility in my current situation. My one advantage is that because I get health insurance through my husband the schools can give me more classes and aren't required to provide health insurance, making me a more likely candidate to pick up a full-time schedule.
Brutus — June 18, 2013
Are professors that teach at more than one institution double-counted in that graph?
Zee — June 19, 2013
it might be more accurate to place him in his car.
Or her. Indeed, female PhDs are more likely to wind up adjuncting, especially if they have children.
HonestED — June 25, 2013
The real question is what are the current full time faculty members that have power and job security doing to help the rest of us? How many profs on the tenure bubble are doing anything to change this horrible work environment? Are they effectively fighting the administrations or are they simply looking out for themselves and helping the admin cut budgets?
It seems professors are too moral to shop at Walmart, chain stores, or eat fast food (mainly because they can afford not to), but when they actually have to risk anything to stand up for the ideals they preach to their students everyday they have no backbones.
It never ceases to amaze me how much sociologists know about social problems, but never do anything about them. It amazes me how the discipline looks at public sociology as something "lesser."
This chart not only points out the poor future many PhDs have to look forward to but also the repugnant present that many tenure and tenure-track professors have created.
the massive shift in the academic labor market: the rise of part timers | orgtheory.net — September 8, 2013
[...] Let’s follow up on Brayden’s post on higher education, which focused on alleged problems in higher education. There is one issue that nearly all observers agree is large and important – the massive shift to part time faculty. This has two consequences. First, it means that the average wage and compensation package for faculty is, on the average, shrinking. Second, it means that there are fewer and fewer stable tenure track jobs waiting for graduate students. This nice post illustrates the trend. It is taken from this article from The Society Pages. [...]
emt22 — September 8, 2013
the most disturbing part of this analysis isn't the trend of hiring adjuncts, but that you refer to "government funding" rather than students willingness to pay as the mediator of value.
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