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Wage woes: MU adjunct faculty paid less than national average

By Emily Williams, Senior Staff Writer

Adjunct faculty across the U.S. and Canada walked out of their classrooms in protest last month. Feb. 25 marked the first-ever National Adjunct Walkout Day, an event organized to bring adjunct faculty, tenured employees, graduate students and other supporters together in protest of low wages and unequal working conditions for non-tenure-track professors.

Although there was no participation in the walkout at Miami, the paltry payment conditions for its adjunct faculty are comparable to other peer institutions. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, nationally, three out of every four hires at universities now are off the tenure track.

Non-tenure-track positions include both adjunct and contingent faculty members. Adjunct faculty members are paid on a per-course basis, whereas contingent faculty members receive salaries. These instructors can be both part-time and full-time employees, but neither are on track to receive permanent contracts from the university.

The trend in hiring more adjunct and contingent faculty has correlated with a decline in state funding to public schools - 49 states are spending less per student on higher education than before the 2008 recession.

Since there has been no evidence these trends will come to a halt, many instructors, like Curtis Dickerson, an adjunct professor at Miami, have expressed concern that tenure-track positions will continue to disappear in favor of lower-paying adjunct and contingent jobs.

"Tenure as a disappearing prospect is extremely disheartening," Dickerson said. "Not because I want to never be fired - I'm not a Supreme Court justice; I teach English - but because I am in a state of constant limbo in regards to my employment."

Adjunct faculty members at Miami receive between $2,100 and $2,400 per three credit-hour course. If an adjunct teaches three courses each semester, as is standard among university professors, they can earn up to about $14,400 a year, according to figures collected by the Chronicle of Higher Education's Adjunct Project.

This figure trails behind the national average for adjunct pay, which sits at $2,700 per course. An adjunct in the English Department at the University of Cincinnati earns about $2,900 a course, whereas those employed at Ohio University can earn as little as $1,800 for a course in Women's Gender Studies and as much as $6,334 for a Plant Biology Course.

The pay adjuncts receive does not include any benefits, and, therefore, people within these ranges of wages qualify for government benefits such as Medicaid. Contracts for adjuncts are renewed on a semester basis.

"I think that if I am entrusted with the education of Miami's bright students, I should also be trusted with job security and a livable wage," Dickerson said.

Although not an adjunct faculty member at Miami, part-time instructor and Ph.D. student in composition and rhetoric Amir Hassan has seen colleagues take on heavy course loads to compensate for low wages.

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"I know some very intelligent and committed teachers from this university and others that have had to take on as many as five to six classes a semester just to get by," Hassan said. "In my experience, it's challenging to teach even half that many students at one time."

In the mid-1970s, according to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education, tenured faculty members still made up the majority of the educators at universities. This trend toward hiring more adjunct and contingent instructors prompted the establishment of the New Faculty Majority, an organization formed in 2009 to promote professional equality and academic freedom for adjunct and contingent faculty members.

Maria Maisto, an adjunct faculty member at Cuyahoga County Community College in Cleveland and the president of the New Faculty Majority, said she is concerned about the effect this trend will have on students' education.

Many adjuncts do not receive the same resources as tenured faculty, said Maisto. Some are not offered their own offices, making it difficult for them to meet with students outside of class.

"This can deny students a mentoring relationship with faculty," Maisto said.

Although organizations like the New Faculty Majority are advocating for the rights of non-tenured faculty, Maisto explained, it is difficult for adjuncts in Ohio to unionize. According to state law, part-time and graduate student employees at Ohio's public universities are not considered public employees and therefore do not have access to the National Labor Relations Board if they wish to unionize.

Susan Eacker, a visiting assistant professor and contingent faculty member at Miami's Hamilton campus, whose Letter to the Editor "Miami's Best Kept Secret: Adjunct faculty are underpaid," appeared in the Feb. 27 edition of The Miami Student, believes that, on this issue, students have the most power to influence change.

"Students don't realize how much power they have," said Eacker. "They're the ones footing the bill."

Likewise, Maisto and the rest of the New Faculty Majority have made educating college students on the current employment conditions at universities a priority.

"The more that they can speak up, the more they can take control of their education," said Maisto.

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