The Size of the Adjunct Problem

by Carol Bernstein

The Table on this page indicates that adjunct faculty members teach more than half of the classes for Arizona students in their first two years of higher education. These adjunct faculty members are paid, on average, about 30% as much, per course taught, as full time faculty members. This is especially demoralizing since the full-time faculty at the universities are paid considerably less than faculty at their peer institutions throughout the country! In addition, the full time faculty members have health and retirement benefits (equal to about 18 % of their salaries), while the adjunct faculty most often have no benefits. However, the full time faculty have some responsibilities in addition to teaching, including curriculum development, admission committee service, etc.

While students pay the same amount of tuition, whether taught by adjunct faculty or full time faculty, the service they receive may be quite different. Most adjunct faculty have no paid office hours, many have no office space in which to counsel students, and adjunct faculty may not have campus telephone or e-mail, so that they lack the infrastucture needed to be able to answer students’ questions.