27 Adjuncting--The Financial Toll

Some colleges will start paying you the sixth week of the semester. I had one college that paid me twice a semester. I still had another college processing the paperwork took three months where I had already taught there three semesters in a row. The bureaucracy took its sweet time to process the paperwork. When they overpaid me by one week, they wanted the overpayment back instantly. I told them there was no need to rush because the next week, they could simply pay me less. The pay can be laughable. I have been asked to teach classes for as little as $20 per hour. That may seem like a lot of money but you have to realize it takes time to travel to these peoples and then they want you to have office hours. I was once asked to teach Soviet diplomatic history for $600 which at the time offered was incredibly low pay. I told them I would do it if they would pay for the tolls which at the time were $.75 and gasoline was about 50 cents at the time. I was relieved when they said no because I figured I would never teach Soviet diplomatic history ever again. I refuse to teach English classes because it would be labor intensive to an honest job of critiquing the papers of the students.

Needless to say, there are little or no fringe benefits. A few progressive colleges offer health care if you teach two classes a semester for three semesters in a row. Depending upon the college, if you take a sick day you also lose the day’s pay. When I was interviewed for a position and the chairman said I should do this and do this, I told him, “Don‘t ask me to do full-work on part-time pay.”

Although some adjuncts have written article on how they have turned adjuncting into a business, it is a road to poverty. I have taught as many as twelve classes a semester and still not make it. The pay of adjuncts has not kept up. Inflation has eroded what was once a decent wage in the 1960s into very little by today. Let us face, Adjuncts are sweatshop intellectual labor.