#adjunct pay

In the academic hierarchy, adjunct professors are at the bottom rung of the ladder. They’re professors who serve on short-term contracts without the possibility of tenure. For the past several years, debates have been swirling in academia over whether these professors are underpaid or exploited.

Student reporters are delving into the issue and getting answers. A Columbia Spectator investigation culled salary data from adjunct pay stubs over the spring and summer and found that adjunct pay at Columbia ranges from $4,500 to $15,000 per course among 10 different arts and sciences departments. The base pay is $5,000 per course, which can be increased at the department’s discretion. Only the visual arts department pays adjuncts below the base pay rate, which hasn’t changed in over a decade, according to a professor interviewed in the investigation.

The chasm between the low and high ends of the pay spectrum is wide. But overall, according to one professor in the investigation, pay at Columbia is higher than at many universities.

Note that many of the professors in the article requested anonymity. This is a wall you’ll often hit in stories about faculty pay; professors are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, particularly adjuncts who have little to no job security. Anonymity should rarely be used in any form of journalism, but sometimes it’s necessary, especially to tell the stories of employees who have little negotiating power. Be careful with it, however, and review the Student Press Law Center’s guide to protecting sources and information first.

Be sure to verify your facts independently, as the Spectator reporters did through the pay stubs. Try to source and verify your data with hard numbers from official sources, such as public records requests. Average salary data can often be found online for employees at public institutions.

Also, the Chronicle of Higher Education is gathering pay and other data about adjuncts across the country — search their database for your college.

Make sure not to let anonymity become a vessel through which disgruntled sources funnel their personal vendettas or grudges. Anonymity should be a last resort used in covering stories that challenge powerful people and institutions.

Where Adjuncts Go When the Music Stops

Most universities in the United States could not open their doors without cheap adjunct labor. But where do those adjuncts go when the system breaks them?

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Fifty percent of adjuncts say debt is personally problematic, according to a study from TIAA-CREF. This is likely a mixture of student loan debt and a wage so low, less than $8 an hour in many cases, that they can’t make a dent into their…

"O! be some other name: What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) Shakespeare uttered these famous lines, and they reverberate with us, often. Yet how frequently do we really think about their meaning? What do names really mean? How do we identify with what we are called, and how do they tie us to one cause, pigeon-holing us, not letting us speak further afield, and making us seem “outlier” when we do?

I am a great believer in the Program for Change, which is presently being used effectively at Vancouver Community College. All adjunct faculty can implement this program in as little or as long a time as needed to achieve equality. Hence, I am presenting Frank Cosco & Jack Longmate's program, with an excellent exposé written by Jack Longmate.

This is not just theoretical. It is tried and true. Please read & share widely! And if you want equality at your university, do more than share: implement!

Thank you to Vanessa Vaile from Precarious Faculty for her technical assistance, always!  Ana M. Fores Tamayo, Adjunct Justice

Originally posted to adj-l, September 1, 2014

©The Columbus Dispatch, Nate Beeler

PLEASE continue your letters, asking for the Governor to meet with Mary Faith. She needs our continued help!  Gov. Cuomo’s Correspondence aid, Kelly Brady:  [email protected] 

New Study: As Executive Pay Rises at Universities, So Does Poverty Wage-Paid Professors and Student Debt

I am an adjunct professor at a major public university in Dallas, Texas. I kept track of all the hours required of me last semester to properly teach my course load, and by semester’s end I had earned $8.26 an hour. Yes, you read that right, as a COLLEGE PROFESSOR I was paid $8.26 an hour. In the meantime, the university’s president will be paid over half a million dollars this year.

This…