Treat Adjunct Faculty with Respect

Higher education is utterly dependent on part-time instructors who barely eke out a living.

Adjunct faculty have become the lifeblood of the teaching workforce in higher education. But administrators and faculty seldom treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Such an observation seems harsh, but it reflects what adjuncts report about their experience. Indeed, it reflects my experience when I taught as an adjunct instructor and what I’ve seen since as a faculty colleague and administrator.

What Hinders Adjuncts’ Effectiveness

Several factors contribute to many adjuncts feeling disrespected. Consider the following:

· Typically, adjunct faculty lack access to private office space where they can meet with students privately, prepare for class, or even connect to their colleagues in any meaningful way.

· Usually just a few weeks or even days before the beginning of a term, they learn whether they will be asked to teach one or more sections of a course. Worse, that contract can be voided if enough students fail to enroll for the course.

· Since they are usually assigned to teach introductory or survey courses, adjuncts have little control over what or how they teach. They seldom get a chance to teach advanced courses in their area of expertise.

· If adjunct faculty have the time or desire to attend professional conferences in their field, they must bear the expense themselves. They usually receive no financial support for such professional development activity.

· When a full-time vacancy occurs, search committees often exclude adjunct faculty from serious consideration despite their holding the required degrees. Why? Because they devote so much time and energy combining several teaching appointments together, often at several schools, that they have been unable to create a substantial record of scholarly publication.

· Finally, many adjunct faculty fail to receive compensation that allows them to avoid poverty subsistence. Trying to live on an uncertain income below $15.00 per working hour with no ancillary benefits is the very definition of financial precarity. In truth, it amounts to a form of exploitation.

What Should Be Done?

Administrators and tenured/tenure-track faculty should implement several measures to address the above problems. I have had personal experience with several of the following actions.

1. Provide private office space for adjuncts to meet with students and conduct other business. Often, creative scheduling will permit full-time faculty to share their office space at specific times when they are not on campus. Moreover, to protect the legal privacy of students, this must become a matter of high priority.

2. Deans and department chairs should track enrollment trends by course and sections carefully in order to plan much further in advance for adding or deleting sections. Final decisions should be reached at the beginning of the previous term at the latest. If poor enrollment requires cancelling a section just before or after the beginning of a term, the assigned adjunct should be offered a different course or section if available. If not, a financial “kill fee” should be paid. (I once implemented a kill stipend for adjuncts with some success. Although the sum was meager, it conveyed concern and improved morale.)

3. Seriously consider moving adjunct faculty out of the introductory course swamp. Take advantage of their expertise by having them teach advanced courses, especially if they have recently completed graduate study or if they have relevant, non-academic, professional experience. Correlatively, shift the most talented and experienced full-time faculty to teach at least some introductory sections. This will help provide more students with the best foundation possible for advanced courses later, and it might attract more students to major in a particular discipline. (I also had some success in implementing this approach, even with evening courses. Full-time faculty began to appreciate their part-time colleagues and to learn more about the educational needs of post-traditional students who tended to enroll in evening courses.)

4. Divert some travel and conference funding to support adjuncts’ professional development, especially if they are able to present a paper or participate in a professional forum. (With full-time faculty approval, I was able to implement this measure rather easily.)

5. When a full-time vacancy occurs, invite adjunct faculty to apply. Especially at institutions other than R1 research universities, consider waiving the usual expectations for scholarly publications for such applicants and for at least two years after an adjunct has been appointed to a full-time position. (I have not implemented this measure, but I see little reason not to do so, especially if an adjunct faculty member has proved to be an excellent instructor.)

6. Do something about adjunct compensation. Raise the level of compensation per section to be equal to what an assistant professor would cost (excluding ancillary benefits) for teaching the same section. If that is not financially possible, begin moving in that direction. (I have had some success in implementing this at two institutions. At one college, the faculty senate successfully urged the administration to provide some ancillary benefits for long-term adjunct faculty.)

7. Most importantly, full-time faculty should support their adjunct colleagues in pushing for higher compensation — even to the point of supporting unionization of full-time and/or part-time faculty if necessary. Current attacks on tenure along with stagnating faculty compensation provide strong impetus for creating greater solidarity among all faculty and probably for more widespread unionization. It is simply the case that meaningful shared governance between faculty and administrators has weakened in recent decades.

With the possible exception of #7, these suggestions are not radical, although some will be difficult to implement immediately. But we must begin. The stakes in terms of adjunct faculty morale and the ability to provide adequate instruction generally are very high.

William Barnett maintains a newsletter, Higher Ed Success (https://bit.ly/39YeluZ) in which he comments on pressing issues that face institutions of higher learning today.