Adjunct Professors: We Need to Talk About the System, Not Just the Pay
Adjunct Professors: We Need to Talk About the System, Not Just the Pay I have spent years teaching college students as an adjunct professor. I love teaching. I love watching a student finally understand something that confuses them. I love seeing a student become a better writer, a better researcher, or simply more confident in their ability to think critically. That is why I think higher education needs an uncomfortable conversation about adjunct faculty and the system that relies on them. This is not simply a question of whether adjunct professors should be paid more. It is a question of whether the system we have built makes sense. According to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR), adjunct professors now account for approximately 40 percent of the faculty workforce in American higher education. At associate-degree institutions, that figure rises to 66 percent (Johnson and Fuesting...