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The Adjunct Rip-off: 10 Reasons Why the Use of Adjuncts Hurts Students

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By William Pannapacker

Look at the fall crop of college catalogs and what do you see: a bearded professor lecturing to a circle of students under autumn trees. Or a beaming young woman advised by a kindly sage in his book-lined office. The captions: "Teaching for Excellence," or, maybe, "Learning for Life."

That should mean high-quality, individualized education from experienced, full-time teacher-scholars who are experts in their fields and dedicated to their students' long-term interests.

What you will get, in many cases, is something completely different.

On November 22, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce released the results of a long-awaited survey that paints a different picture of higher education in the humanities:

• Undergraduate courses are a low priority at many colleges.

• Except for history and art history, more than half of all undergraduate introductory courses are taught by transient, non-tenure-track faculty members or adjuncts.

• Adjuncts often teach four or more courses simultaneously at multiple institutions; they are hired like day laborers, paid on a par with fast-food workers, and usually receive no benefits.

• Ivy League colleges are no more likely than small liberal-arts colleges to use full-time, tenure-track faculty members to teach undergraduate courses.

Most significantly, only 42 percent of colleges responded to the survey. Is it unreasonable to suspect that the practices of the other 58 percent of colleges are even worse?

It should surprise no one that unethical practices and misrepresentations flourish in secrecy. For the last 30 years an ever-increasing percentage of colleges have chosen to shift investment away from undergraduate teaching in ways that do not register in current institutional rankings or the criteria for accreditation. In a few weeks, however, the Modern Language Association will publish specific statistics about individual English and foreign-language departments that will allow the public to see -- if only in a few disciplines -- the extent of unethical labor practices that cheat undergraduates out of the education for which they are paying so dearly.

Using this departmental information, graduate students, faculty members, and the general public will be able, for the first time, to look at a specific institution and judge for themselves whether that college is misrepresenting its educational services.

Some critics of these surveys have suggested that the presence of a high percentage of adjuncts does not necessarily reflect badly on institutional quality. "There are no quantitative studies, after all," they say. And, taking advantage of the inability of adjuncts to openly criticize their own compromised performance without risking their jobs, they ask, "Aren't part-time teachers as effective and dedicated, if not more so, than full-time, tenured faculty members?"

Of course, adjuncts are often more dedicated than regular professors. They have to be to continue working under existing conditions. But, for at least two decades, it has been self-evident to unbiased observers that an increasingly exploitative reliance on adjuncts severely compromises higher education.

When teachers come last, so do students.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Faculty Inaccessibility. Because they have to teach four or five courses a semester (typically 120 to 150 students) in order to earn about $20,000 a year (with no benefits), adjuncts cannot give individualized attention to students. Often, it is nearly impossible to remember their names. Moreover, adjunct faculty members are not paid for holding office hours; it is not in their interest to be accessible. Tenured faculty members, likewise, are increasingly unavailable as a direct result of their diminished relative numbers.

2. Inadequate Advising. Many adjuncts have only short-term relationships with institutions (as well as concurrent employment at multiple institutions); as a result, they are not likely to be able to advise students competently about educational resources at specific colleges. Undergraduates, particularly freshmen, who need the most experienced advisers, are often forced to make their own way. All too often, students look for their college teachers to become advisers only to learn that these teachers are transient adjuncts who cannot help them outside the course itself. Typically, adjuncts are not available to write recommendations (which are among the most important factors in admission to graduate and professional schools), and, when they do, these recommendations carry little weight because they demonstrate only a short-term knowledge of the student.

3. Incoherent Curricula. Adjuncts have limited connections with the institutions at which they teach, and they cannot be expected to have a deep knowledge of an individual college's values nor a clear sense of their personal role in the overall curriculum. Although they teach most of the introductory courses, adjuncts are not usually involved in departmental governance. Indeed, they are often not treated with the respect associated with academic collegiality. As a result, many programs are nearly incoherent from a lack of curricular coordination. Sequential courses, for example, often have an unclear relationship to each other. Students are sometimes taught the same material over and over again, and major gaps in their education are left unfilled.

4. Declining Faculty Expertise. Adjuncts are often asked to teach courses on short notice on subjects in which they have little prior experience. Compounding the problem, adjuncts often do not have time to properly prepare lectures, and they are so overworked that they cannot remain current in their fields of expertise. Undergraduates often face faculty members who can offer only the most general guidance on topics that might otherwise result in valuable, in-depth research and learning.

5. Impaired Academic Freedom. Because they have semester-to-semester contracts, adjuncts can be fired (or, rather, "not renewed") for making the slightest waves. Adjuncts cannot safely lobby for curricular reform, or support unpopular causes, nor can they risk challenging their students very much. The increasing presence of adjuncts also has a chilling effect on the tenured faculty, whose relative power to shape their institutions is diminished by the rising number of adjuncts.

6. Lowered Academic Standards. Because they are so overworked, adjuncts are less likely to give grading-intensive assignments such as research essays or even short-answer exams. The assignments from which students learn the most are weeded out of the curriculum by necessity -- and self-defense. Adjuncts' lack of departmental backing sometimes leads them to use more "objective" methods of grading (e.g., Scantron forms), which are less likely to be challenged by students than "subjective" evaluations of written assignments. Teachers have a duty to maintain standards, but they cannot hold the line when they lack the support of their departments.

7. Grade Inflation. When qualitative grading is necessary (such as in composition courses), there is a tendency to reduce the workload by inflating the grades. Because students never challenge high grades, such grades require less written justification and follow-up advising. In many cases, "A" papers have only been skimmed by instructors who are too busy to make fine distinctions. Very few students fail courses anymore because an "F" requires more paperwork and trouble than a "C." Adjuncts soon discover that strict grading results in student complaints, reduced enrollments, and "nonrenewals" of their teaching assignments.

8. Lowered Value of Degree. Because of all of the above factors, which have resulted from the increased use of adjuncts, many once-credible institutions are becoming little better than diploma mills. Ask the employers of recent graduates. They will tell you that a college degree from many institutions -- even when it is accompanied by a high G.P.A. -- is a guarantee of little more than basic literacy. If the use of adjuncts has contained tuition costs (an arguable position), colleges have substantially reduced the value of the degree.

9. Cynicism. Students are quick to internalize the institutional contempt for teaching and, by extension, the disregard for the students. Every course taught by an undersupported adjunct in an abusive department carries an unintended message: "The college regards this course as a waste of time, but you still have to pay for it." How can students respect education when it is widely known that many Ph.D.'s can barely earn a living wage as full-time teachers? What kind of moral authority does a college have when it exploits its workers and "customers" as ruthlessly as any unregulated corporation?

10. Cost to Students and their Families. At a time when advanced skills are essential for individuals and the larger economy, the withdrawal of funding from undergraduate teaching has produced a crisis in higher education that is not limited to the difficulties faced by adjunct teachers. It's the students, not the adjuncts, who suffer the most. Not only are they and their families taking on crippling financial burdens, they are being denied the education for which they are paying, and they will, in all likelihood, be denied the opportunities that would have been theirs if they had received a genuine education rather than the semblance of one.

Many of these observations are anecdotal. They have to be, for there have not yet been any statistical studies on the harm caused by the excessive use of adjuncts. But these points are based on 14 years of experience in higher education at six colleges, countless conversations with students, adjuncts, and tenured faculty members, and the 1,000-plus letters sent to me on this topic as a columnist on the Career Network over the last two years.

But don't take my word for it. If you're wondering about a particular college, go and talk with its students, attend a few introductory classes, and meet with the teachers, including the adjuncts. You will, in all probability, discover a culture that is very different from the one presented in the promotional literature.

Meanwhile, institutions that have made sacrifices in order to avoid exploitative labor practices should use the new data to advertise themselves. What will it mean when a small, liberal-arts college can demonstrate with hard evidence that it is serving its undergraduates better than, say, Harvard or Yale, and for significantly less money?