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Adjuncting Until the End of Time

Universities now have more adjuncts than tenured and tenure-track professors combined. The conditions are unsustainable—for professors and students alike.

Lecture at Regis College, 1978.

One night many years ago, my partner came home from work, hobbled on his crutches across the living room, and nearly collapsed onto the couch. He was still recovering from major surgery but was unable to take time off from work, as his income was dependent on a patchwork of adjunct teaching jobs without benefits under short-term contracts at three different colleges.

A massive bolus of keys, several for each place he worked, was clipped to his belt and jangled comically, metaphorically, off the edge of the couch. “Are we living in a sitcom?” I asked. We both started laughing. As with many issues in this era, the tragedy of reality had somehow crossed the line into satire. Still, I mentally pocketed the scene. Years later, I wrote it into my novel The Adjunct—then I wrote it out, for being too absurd.

Now the news is teeming with stories about higher education—not only about Trump’s attacks on universities, but about the recent college grads who are facing the toughest job market since the pandemic. For those who do manage to find employment, over 40 percent are working jobs that don’t usually require a college degree.

In the midst of these crises, it’s easy to miss a longer-term problem in academia: the deterioration of working conditions for faculty. Because there are jobs for college instructors. They do require degrees. But the pay and the benefits are abysmal. Universities now have more adjuncts than tenured and tenure-track professors combined. Many adjuncts make around $4,000 a course, and a quarter of adjuncts make less than $25,000 a year. In no city in the United States is this enough money to live off comfortably.

Tell people that your partner is a professor, and they don’t imagine an adjunct. The job conjures the image of an idyllic campus dotted with rusticated stone buildings, of a messy office packed with books, and of a job so cushy, all that’s left to worry about is existential dread. The academy of campus novels, from The Secret History to Wonder Boys, and TV shows like The Chair or HBO’s new comedy The Rooster offer a mythology as quaint these days as the western.

Adjunct professors are the gig-economy workers of higher ed. They often have multiple jobs, partly because of the low pay, partly because........

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