53.0% of the teaching staff at New York University are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is on par with the national average of 51.4%.
I want to add that all these numbers relate to adjunct faculty and donât take into account the fact that much of the teaching at some schools is done by grad students, either as TAâs or instructors. There have been strikes for grad student pay and benefits as well. Their labor is dirt cheap and stipends tend to be low.
the article said adjuncts. Note, there are only two colleges in SF that are not speicalized (so hold your CV):
Univ of San Francisco. (pays $2100/unit, i.e., $6300 for a 3 unit course)
San Francisco State (part time adjuncts are posted as Full Time equivalent pay â rather misleading, IMO)
Then there is UCSF (health professions), and UC School of Law (law faculty make bank)
This is all I can find about Zippiaâs data sources, from your link:
Our adjunct faculty estimates are verified against BLS, Census, and current job openings data for accuracy.
To my knowledge, BLS doesnât track adjunct professor occupation, nor do they track any type of college professor occupationsâŠsomething bluebayou noted above. In the absence of more details in Zippiaâs methodology, I discount their findings.
Totally agree. I was summarizing the content but asked âfor whatâ and âwhereâ and noted the absence of details. Definitely skeptical of a high number like that and it is vague anyway. EVEN $6,300 is relatively high. I wonder if they confused adjunct with tenure track!
Recent article on adjunct salaries. https://www.thecrimson.com/column/toward-a-higher-higher-education/article/2023/2/21/julien-adjunct
I had no idea they were so low although they do vary by region. Example, at State College of Florida, pay is $2000 per semester course, at U South Florida $2200, but at Northeastern in Boston, minimum compensation for a semester course is $5400 (but still almost nothing in terms of Boston costs.)
At U Toronto and McGill, itâs 9k for a one semester course, which is better but still low considering Canadian tax rates.
If someone has a PhD in, say, the arts, and wants to start a new career in another field (due to scarcity of academic jobs) one obstacle is the automatic filters employers use to select for interviews. It used to be that a PhD was understood to have high level skills (reading, research, writing, speaking, teaching) that were transferable. However they are no easily filtered out unless they use the right words that the filter likes!
If, say, a PhD decides to do some event management type job, they are competing with 22 year olds with event management degrees or older folks with experience.
This is not unprecendented. I remember science PhDâs driving cabs in the 1970âs. I had artist friends working in IHOP or a grocery store. Some of them finally "made itâ after years.
I do think the specialization of degrees, the specialization of job postings, and the automatic filters are kind of siloing PhDâs into their area of study, even if they want to do something else. Or they can start in the equivalent of the mail room at age 30 and work their way up.
It also depends on what field your PhD is in. The ones who are more hireable are sometimes surprising. English and history PhDs will often find non-academic jobs which are at least as well paying as academic jobs. But yes, art and art history, linguistics with focus on some languages, and some biological sciences fields are hard to sell outside of academia.
That being said, many academic have a difficult time finding non-academic jobs, because they really do not know how to sell their qualifications, and often do not know how to go about a non-academic job search.
Some of the reasons for that are
A, in the academic job search, there is the implicit assumption that the applicant has all of the skills which are considered valuable by employers (including those outside academia). So academics are not used to providing a list of skills, such as writing, analysis, familiarity with the most used software and platforms, etc. They are submitting applications which do not provide employers with the information they (the employers) need in order to know whether the applicant has the required skills for the job.
They are also used to listing the articles produced by a student or the amount of money they got on a grant, and assuming that their employer knows what skills went into those accomplishments. Academic CVs do not include what these entailed, nor do they state what job-related skills these accomplishments demonstrated.
B, academic applications are expected to focus on why the place of employment is such a great place for the employee, and it is considered bad form to âboastâ too much about accomplishments. You write your publications, your grants, and the classes you taught. So academics are also not used to writing how great they are, and what great things they will bring to the employer, or, if they do, they donât do a good job.
C, the academic job search is often about selling the ideas that the candidate has, âsee what great ideas I have for research/teachingâ. That isnât something that works outside of academia.
D, academic jobs are generally very narrowly focussed, especially in the fields which have the largest numbers of PhDs without jobs. The university is looking for an expert in Medieval Romance Languages, so they wonât really look at people with expertise in Medieval Germanic languages. That means that academics will overlook jobs for which they are qualified, since they âonlyâ have 75% of the qualifications. Theya re also pretty weak at writing why they do qualify for these jobs, or for jobs which are not related to the expertise.
Personally, I had a lot more success in landing interviews and job offers outside of academia than I ever had in academia.
Current job openings may give a misleading impression of adjunct pay levels, since the open jobs are likely the ones that are hardest to fill and therefore have to offer higher pay. Indeed, on the Zippia page are some job opening listings, which seem to be heavily biased toward looking for instructors in the health professions.
Yes, it is common for industry jobs to list wish lists of ârequirementsâ, most (or sometimes all) of which are only small preferences. So someone expecting job listing ârequirementsâ to be actual requirements may not apply to a job that they would be considered for.
Of course, the tendency for industry jobs to list ârequirementsâ that are not really requirements encourages job applicants to shotgun resumes and applications everywhere, rather than being more selective about applying only to jobs that look like good matches from the listed ârequirementsâ.
The Zippia data claims only 9% of adjuncts hold a PhD. Most have bachelors or masters degrees. Seems odd to me. Any thoughts on that? Is this just bad data?
I have a friend that used to adjunct at a community college. She had a masters degree in the sciences and was fine with the part time nature of it. Another acquaintance had a PhD in the humanities (philosophy I think) and jumped from place to place for years before landing a tenure track job someplace. Very tough on him.
I can speak pretty candidly about biomedical sciences and apologies in advance if my tone is a bit judgemental. Most PhD and postdoc students are never taught how to become tenure track faculty. The major reason IMO is because that would suck time away from doing research that is paid for by the PI. Outside of training grants, it is the PIs that pay stipends, tuition etc. at elite programs. Going to a non-elite PhD program in biomedical sciences is generally a terrible idea. Generally, if your studentship has to be covered by teaching labs or by giving intro lectures, that is not the program you want to be in. Also, the quality of students and trainees vary wildly. Best ones are driven, curious and entrepreneurial. Why entrepreneurial? Because no one tells you how to become successful. You kind of sort of have to figure it out.
The secret sauce @hebegebe is not papers in prestigious journals. They mean about nothing. Here is the template for R1 schools:
To get hired, you need a âPathway to Independenceâ award from NIH. This is a minimum for fresh grads (<10 years out of PhD). About 50% award rate.
If you are a bit past your prime (sayâŠ5+ years of postdoc), you need transferable NIH funding in place or a pretty decently scored grant that has a shot at getting funded soon.
To get tenure and beyond, you need a minimum R01 award as PI and at elite schools at least 2 R01s (1 as PI, 1 as co-I). The award rate for new PIs at most institutes is ~15% and about 10% for seasoned PIs. I believe that over 50% of those that receive a first award never get a second R01. So, it is brutal.
The other stuff is generally speaking window dressing. I personally do not know of a single person with an R01 award that is unemployed/underemployed. If they are, there is a lot more to it. I know many people that have âprestigiousâ publications that are toiling as permanent/glorified postdocs.
Also, SIL is a professor and HOD at a state school in humanities. Apparently, you have to wealthy or just plain mad to get a PhD and hope for tenure track at a top school.
To begin with, their âAdjunct Career Pathsâ is so obviously taken from other professions that it is ridiculous. The actual Adjunct career paths:
A. Adjunct - Leave academia - join other career trajectory
B. Adjunct - non-TT FT lecturer - non-TT FT Senior lecturer - retirement
C. Adjunct - TT position - Associate Professor - Full professor (maybe) - retirement
D. Adjunct - get non-faculty job at university - different career path
E. Whatever the actual career trajectory happens to be (lawyer, architect, planner, etc)
F. Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Die in poverty
Also, their academic trajectories yet again demonstrate the deep and profound ignorance of all things related to academia.
In general, people have this idea that "they have lots of DATA, so they must be correct. I donât know where their data is from, but I can say, with certainty, that itâs garbage.
Then there is the claim that âThe average Adjunct Faculty salary in the United States is $83,069 per year or $40 per hour.â
BZZZZZT. Wrong again, Zippia.
According to AAUP, âIn 2020â21, average pay for adjunct faculty members to teach a course section ranged from $2,979 in public associateâs institutions without ranks to $5,557 in public doctoral institutions.â
A full time teaching load is 6 courses a year. In extreme cases it is 12. That would mean that the average pay for an adjunct, who was FT (has not been found in the wild) would be paid $35,748 a year at public associateâs institutions, and $66,684 if they were working at a public doctoral institution. For these faculty earn â$83,069 per yearâ they would have to teach 15 classes a year at a public doctoral institution, or 28 courses a year at a public doctoral institution.
The academic rule of thumb is that you spend around 3+ hours working per hour frontal teaching. So the standard 3 weekly hour course means 10 hours of work for the professor. That includes office hours, preparing the course, grading (most adjuncts do not have TAs), creating homework and exams. A semester is 15 weeks, so each course is around 150 hours spent per course. That means that the hourly pay of an adjunct is $19 an hour at public associateâs institutions, and $37 if they were working at a public doctoral institution. That would NOT result in a general average of $40.
So, once again, Zippia is either making their data up, or taking the salaries of the highest paid adjuncts and claiming that these are the averages of all adjuncts
Moreover, their abysmal ignorance of the subject is laid bare by the fact that adjuncts are paid by course, not by hours, nor by year. The entire idea that you can look at adjunct salaries as âwhat do adjunct make in a yearâ is ludicrous. It changes year to year, depending on what courses are available, and where they are available.
It is practically impossible for an adjunct to get 5 courses per semester at the same university. They usually teach a a few universities, and the time that travel, etc., takes makes teaching 5 classes per semester almost impossible.
Adjuncts are part time by definition, and they give the average salary of part-time job as though it were full time. Again they are totally ignorant of academia as a whole, and adjuncts in particular.
That article is not worth th eelectrons used to create it and maintain it.
I reads like it was written by AI, and I would guess that the entire article, including the numbers, are produced by AI. It is a classic case of GIGO.
More proof that their data is bunk.
According to people who actually show where their data comes from, around 1/3 have PhD, and the great majority of the rest have masters, sume of the terminal masters (like MFA). Only around 5% have a BA or BS.
Sorry, but, as far as can tell, Zippia is pulling their data from their nether regions.
I had a 30-year career in industry rising to be a senior executive and partner. Upon retirement, I began my second act as a professor of the practice which is a fancy term for adjunct professor. I work for a top 5 public institution (if you believe rankings). I teach approximately 7.5 credit hours a year, pay is 60K. No benefits, but lots of other perks. I am asked why I do it. Well, it keeps my brain sharp, my soul young and the reward feedback from helping the students is immeasurable. The pay feeds my Hobbies, or you can just call it walking around money. In my opinion, all Universities should mix faculty from academia (Phdâs) who do research and teach along with individuals from Industry like me that bring real world experience into the classroom. The added benefit with me is I have 30 years of relationships and have helped numerous students get internships and full-time jobs. As to the challenges of Phdâs getting tenure, I have only anecdotal evidence, but it appears to be more difficult every year because of the pressure to control costs. Unfortunately, itâs not the faculty costs that are the problem but the ridiculous amount of administrative personal and the amenities arms race needed to attract students. Just look at the threads on CC about campus tours and how parents judge the schools based on dorms, student union, etc. etc. Lastly, I think things in Industry are changing (Internet, AI, Automation, etc.) at a rapid pace, such that Colleges and Universities must adapt quickly, or they will face some tough times ahead attracting students.
You are a great example of what non-TT faculty should be. Indeed about 1/2 of all adjuncts fall within this type, or professionals who teach specialized courses part time, or other such decently paid non-TT faculty who are pretty happy with their situation.
Unfortunately, as I have mentioned, around 1/2 of all adjuncts are those who universities hire to teach intro courses, and are hired per course, per term. They are underpaid and under supported. They provide a much less than ideal education since not only are they provided with very few resources (no space for office hours, for example), but have no ability to enforce standards. As it is, even in many âtopâ schools, few faculty even know who taught the intro courses a couple of years back, and there is no way to actually evaluate the level of mastery students have on intro topics.
They have become so ubiquitous that there are many highly regarded universities in which undergraduates will only start taking classes with a TT or tenured faculty when they are Juniors.
That covers a lot of it. The other part is that states have cut funding to public universities, but have, in many cases, frozen tuition. That means that the administration need more research money, so TT/Tenured faculty need to spend more time writing grant proposals. Funding for NSF and NIH is far lower than the research demand (if I told people how little Congress has allotted to fundamental research in AI you wouldnât know whether to laugh or cry). SO competition for grant money is higher, meaning that faculty have to spend more time writing grants in order to get funded.
So, if faculty are busy writing grant proposals, that is less time for teaching. Faculty can usually use grant money to reduce teaching loads, but the university uses a lot of that money to supplement all other things except teaching. That means that very little is left for paying instructors.
In Humanities, itâs worse. State legislatures do not value humanities research, and consequently, neither do the boards of trustees. However, Humanities departments are supposed to teach many of the gen-ed courses, like all the English courses, History courses, etc. But the universities do not want to hire any new faculty in these fields, so they go cheap. Very cheap.
Academics in the field do not do the field any favors by continuing to churn out people with PhDs who will never get a TT job (because production of PhDs is tied to the ranking of the program).
