Class half-empty or half-full? Adjunct instructors struggle to make best of part-time schedules

As one semester ends and another is set to begin, college classrooms across the country will once again be filled with fresh-faced, ramen-noodle-eating denizens of higher learning. And they’ll 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, a 36-yearold adjunct history instructor who most recently taught at Miami Dade College.

“You have a role to fill and the schools know it. That’s what’s at the forefront.”

Datron, who moved to Miami in 2011, earned his master’s degree in history from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He 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. Universities around the country can save money by paying their adjunct instructors a minimal salary while increasing tuition for students,” he says. “That is the frustrating part. We make less while the students pay more.”

Give and take

Erica Swanson, a former administrator with the City Colleges of Chicago, 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 suggests that today’s adjunct instructors, especially those in

the liberal arts, go in eyes wide open and with a strong back-up plan — and other streams of income. “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 non-academic toolbox.”

Datron agrees. He’s definitely found ways to put together an annual income, including working as a private tutor for high school students, researching historical material for the state of New Jersey and picking up occasional hours at a dry cleaner near his apartment. “Dry cleaning is the family business back in New Jersey so I know a little bitaboutit,”hesays.“Imostlydoiton weekends and I’m not crazy about it but it’s something I know and I have been working for a good business. Sad thing is I probably make as much at the dry cleaners as I do teaching classes.”