Adjunct Faculty being Replaced with Tenure Track Faculty-Good for Students but Bad for Adjuncts

[garland]

An in-between option is to hire more non-tenure-track lecturers, who are paid a decent wage but are less of a commitment on both sides.

That’s me–I consider myself terrifically fortunate to have found this, after many years of adjuncting or fulltime none teaching college positions. I am not expected to do research, but I have a real salary, benefits, and respect. Works for me!

[juillet]

I don’t know too many full-time adjuncts - e.g., adjuncts who are teaching a ~3/3 load or more - who want to be adjuncts. I do know lots of part-time adjuncts who are happy with their lot, either because they’re like sylvan8798 and always intended for it to be a standalone part-time job, or because they teach one or two classes a year while they do something else full-time (finish their PhD, work at a non-academic job).

Many tenure track hires are not “freshly minted” as doing a post-doc or two is not unusual for PhDs. I see no particular reason why existing adjuncts would not be as competitive as the post-docs, depending on the position.

I think “freshly-minted” in this sense would also refer to PhDs with postdoctoral experience, since postdocs are typically viewed as training programs and not a ‘real job’ by many academics. A lot of academics will tell you that adjuncts are not as competitive as postdocs for a variety of reasons.

One is simple mechanics of time - tenure-track positions usually carry a research component as well as a teaching component. Postdocs have had 2-5 years to work on their research exclusively, while most adjuncts (especially adjuncts teaching 3-4+ classes a semester) probably have not had as much time to work and publish. So the CVs of the postdocs look better. A lot of natural, physical, and social science committees, especially, would hire a recent postdoc with a ton of publications and little to no teaching experience over an adjunct with 5 years of teaching but few publications. This is especially true at elite colleges and research universities. Even many humanities departments would do this at the Harvards and Dukes of the world.

Another is perception…I’ve heard some professors say that the adjuncts in their department have already proven that they are willing to work for low pay and no benefits, so what is the incentive to promote them into a full-time, TT job? There’s also the allure of “potential”. And there’s the sense in academia that someone who’s been on the job market for more than some arbitrary number of job cycles is ‘stale.’ How many cycles that is depends on the person you’re asking, but it’s probably less than or equal to 5.