Many years ago, I was running with another professor, and we talked about how public university faculty in Florida usually have nine-month contracts and are effectively unemployed in the summer. We also talked about how adjunct faculty had it far worse: they work on a course-by-course basis and have no job security or benefits. My friend said this was somewhat like being migrant workers— working part time and moving from job to job without any security and with terrible pay. Naturally, the migrant professors, as my friend called them, have it much better than migrant laborers. However, the comparison seemed apt in that both groups are exploited and underappreciated.
Back when I was a kid, my mother thought it would be a good idea to make some extra money picking blueberries. When she was young, this was something done by Maine kids. This must have been before the days of cheap migrant labor in Maine and, as we found out, things had changed. My sister, her friend and I gave it a shot, but we did not make it through a full day and ended up owing money because someone stole our rakes and baskets. It was the worst job I ever tried, but I did get a brief look at what it takes to pick crops.
After grad school, I started my career as an adjunct professor. I taught four classes each semester for $2,000 per class and had no benefits or job security. The next year I was hired as a visiting professor and made $30,000 a year—plus benefits. After three years of that, I was finally hired into a tenure track line. Though I am now a tenured full professor, I have not forgotten those adjunct days. It was not as bad as raking blueberries, but it was a lot of work for very little money, and it felt a lot like that blueberry day for an entire year.
Like migrant laborers, adjunct professors are poorly paid. Back in 1993 I was paid $2,000 per class, making $16,000 for the eight classes I taught over the school year. In 2010, the median salary for adjuncts was $2,700 per three credit hour class. In 2026, the average is $4,000 per class; so, an adjunct teaching 8 classes a year would average $32,000, with no benefits. While this might sound good, adjuncts often have a master’s degree or Ph.D. and the average salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree is $81,000.
While there might be some exceptions, adjunct faculty typically do not get health coverage from their employers or other benefits. When I was an adjunct, I was fortunate to be young and healthy, but a major medical problem would have ruined me financially. I did tough out illnesses and injuries then because I had no insurance.
Like migrant laborers, adjuncts often travel from workplace to workplace to make their living. One of my past colleagues, who has a doctorate and years of experience, taught at Florida A&M University, Florida State University, and what was then Tallahassee Community College. He had to rush between classes to get from school to school. His situation was (and is) not uncommon—other adjuncts I know teach at both universities in Tallahassee, the community college and online just to make enough to live on. Some even travel around the county from adjunct job to adjunct job, literally acting as migrant laborers. While regular faculty have offices, adjuncts often do not. They might, for example, be assigned a shared room for office hours and must get the department office manager to open the door for them because they are not given a key.
Unlike most migrant laborers, adjunct are highly educated professionals who are doing jobs that normally pay reasonably well and come with benefits. The situation of adjuncts in higher education is like if hospitals employed adjunct medical doctors. The adjuncts doctors would have their medical doctorates, perform surgery, treat patients and so on. That is, they would be just like regular doctors except that their pay would be a fraction of what the doctors received and they would have no benefits or job security.
As might be imagined, this terrible disparity in pay is unjust. After all, the adjuncts are being paid far less for doing the same work and they are generally qualified as regular faculty. It would be another matter if adjuncts were less educated or did work proportional to their low pay. However, this is not the case. As such, the treatment of adjuncts is wrong.
Naturally, those employing adjuncts have a good reason to use them: they do professional work at a fraction of the cost of hiring regular faculty and can be “fired” by not re-hiring them next semester. It is also common for universities to hold off providing an adjunct with a contract until two or more weeks into a semester—that way they can be sure that the class will fill and that money will be available. An adjunct without a contract can just be let go without pay. I have seen this happen—people working for two weeks, then being told to not come back for week three. Obviously enough, not paying an adjunct for the time worked would be theft, although this does happen.
One irony is that the students adjuncts teach will increase their earning potential significantly by getting a college degree. As noted above, students who get a bachelor’s degree will probably end up making more than the adjuncts who taught them.
People outside of academics sometimes ask me why adjuncts put up with the terrible conditions rather than getting a different job. While some admit that they have been unable to get a job elsewhere, most adjuncts I have spoken to (and I have met many over the years) say they love teaching and are willing to live with horrible salaries to do what they love to do.
Naturally, this claim might be doubted. However, this sort of attitude holds all through teaching, from kindergarten through the graduate level. After all, people who have the degrees needed to teach could make much more money working in other professions, yet they choose to remain in academics. While they might have some other reasons, it is most often because they believe in what they are doing and like teaching.
Like many good things that benefit people, education is largely powered by people willing to make personal sacrifices to help others and do what they believe to be right. Naturally, educators are subject to the unrelenting culture wars of the right for this reason.
Unfortunately, this love is unfairly exploited, and little has been to address the treatment of adjuncts. In fact, the current trend in public education has been for the right to cut budgets and attack teachers’ unions. As education costs continue to increase you can be sure that this money is not going to pay adjuncts properly.
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