How much are we worth? From the Chron of Higher Ed Blog

How Much Is an Adjunct Worth?
April 1, 2011, 11:47 am

By Isaac Sweeney

Few community colleges, it seems, try to accurately prorate the pay of adjuncts. It seems like colleges just pick a number, maybe an “industry standard,” and pay adjunct faculty members that amount per course.

At Blue Ridge Community College, where I am an adjunct in English, I get about $1,800 a course. There’s a weird system in Virginia’s community colleges in which, if I’m on a campus more than one day a week, I get a little extra pay — about $200 extra, or $2,000 a course. I guess that is driving money?

The trouble, and where the source of controversy will lie, is how to value an adjunct’s worth in comparison to a full-time faculty member. What percentage of work do adjuncts do as compared to their full-time counterparts? I mean, an adjunct doesn’t typically have to go to all those committee meetings or advise students or even worry about research and publishing, so it definitely shouldn’t be 100 percent. But 70 percent sounds fair, especially at a two-year college, where faculty members are usually expected to teach more than do research. All that “other stuff” couldn’t possibly take up more than 30 percent of a full-time faculty member’s time at a community college.

Here’s some math: If a full-time faculty member starts at $40,000 a year (like at Blue Ridge Community College), then 70 percent of that is $28,000. Divide that by a full load for two semesters, which is 10 total courses (five for the fall semester, and five in the spring.). Then the magic per-course rate should be $2,800.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, that figure is $1,000 more for each course than adjuncts, at least in English, receive at the college. That’s a lot of money that we are missing out on.

If you want to read more about pro-rata pay, a good place to start is the American Federation of Teachers’ Faculty and College Excellence page.

This entry was posted in The Two-Year Track.