Adjunct instructors struggle to make most of part-time positions
As a new semester gets underway, the classrooms of institutions of higher learning are filled once again with fresh-faced, ramennoodle eating denizens of higher learning. And there will be students in those classrooms, too.
Such is the life of an adjunct instructor in today’s halls of academia. Often struggling to make a livable wage, today’s adjuncts fill a role for universities by teaching students at all levels.
“It can be a thankless job but I have to preface that by saying I absolutely love what I do,” says Ryan Datron, an adjunct history instructor. “You have a role to fill and the schools know it. That’s what’s at the forefront.”
Datron says he always planned on working as a college instructor but didn’t think the pay would be so meager and the opportunities so evasive.
“I’m surprised that I still don’t have a long-term schedule at any one school,” Datron says. “I had heard some horror stories from people I know who have similar degrees but you don’t want to believe that those horror stories are ever going to apply to you.”
Datron backs up a bit. “Maybe horror story is too harsh of a term. I just think that most universities around the country have figured out they can save money by paying their adjunct instructors a minimal salary while increasing tuition for students,” he says. “That is frustrating. We make less, the students pay more.” Give and take
Erica Swanson, a former college administrator, says colleges have always counted on part-time help to not only educate their students but to balance their budgets. “I’m going to have to play both sides of the fence on this one because while adjuncts don’t make a lot of money, they are getting a chance to do what they study to do, which is never going to pay well, to be honest,” Swanson says. “It is probably unrealistic to think you can make a living being an adjunct professor today.”
Instead, Swanson suggest that today’s adjunct instructors, especially those in the liberal arts, go in eyes wide open and with a serious back-up plan. “A lot of these adjuncts are people who want to be writers, work on research or work in the private sector and they can use their teaching experience as a springboard to other opportunities,” she says. “Leading a classroom helps develop planning skills, leadership skills and other areas of one’s nonacademic toolbox.”
Swanson says adjuncts should not limit themselves to one school or subject. “Sometimes people get comfortable teaching entry-level psychology or firstyear English,” she says. “I would suggest anyone coming out of school with a master’s degree have ample experience taking and teaching online courses. Demand for those skills will only increase.”