They don’t make much money, they don’t have health benefits, and they don’t have job security. So why do adjuncts keep showing up to teach in college classrooms semester after semester, year after year?
The Chronicle went to Chicago to find that out, and a lot more.
Adjuncts who teach part time are now about half of the professoriate, making them a crucial sector of academe. But information on their daily jobs, their qualifications, and their motivations is sparse. To help fill the gap, we focused, both in a survey and in intensive reporting, on adjuncts in the Chicago metropolitan area. The region’s rich mix of public and private four-year institutions and community colleges provided a lens through which to view the variety of adjunct employment.
Our survey was answered by more than 600 adjuncts who work at 90 institutions. Their responses, though not a random sample, gave us a detailed look at their educations—most do not have doctorates—and their compensation—annual salaries of $20,000 or less are the norm. Students are likely to pay more than that at some of the area’s colleges, like Loyola University Chicago, which charges about $30,000 in tuition alone.
We also learned that full-timers who work off the tenure track at a large university share some of the same concerns as part-timers, and why adjuncts feel marginalized on the job.
Answers to that all-important question of why they do it came in many forms, but rarely in purely financial terms. “It’s not the money,” says Festus Mwinzi, who has been a physics instructor at Kishwaukee College for five years. “It’s about giving back to the community and seeing the students excel.”
Following a Dream
Some part-time adjuncts are still trying to hold onto the dream of a full-time or tenure-track position. But they find that doing so becomes increasingly difficult.
James Davis, for instance, has worked as an adjunct for a decade and began teaching part time as a way to network his way to a better faculty job. “I’m hoping that I acquire enough experience teaching and get to know enough of the right people to get a full-time position,” says Mr. Davis, an English instructor at the City Colleges of Chicago’s Truman College with a master’s of fine arts in creative writing. “The competition for jobs is so tough out there. I’m up against people with Ph.D.'s who are trying to get jobs at community colleges.” Mr. Davis is 47 and says that at his age, he has no plans to pursue a doctorate.
About eight years ago, shortly after arriving in Chicago from New Orleans, Mr. Davis applied for a teaching job at Loyola University Chicago but didn’t hear back. So he visited the institution to follow up and was given two classes to teach on the spot.
The schedule suited him. “I would rather do this and struggle than be a slave to some office job,” Mr. Davis says. “I think that’s what motivates a lot of people. It’s the promise of a full-time job, and on the other hand you’ve got some freedom when it comes to your time.”
Until this semester, Mr. Davis had usually taught five courses between Loyola and Truman. But this fall, the three courses he taught at Truman were cut down to two at the last minute. And he didn’t get any classes from Loyola.
He expects to earn about $18,000, in all, this year from teaching and additional work as a tutor in the writing center at Roosevelt University. The recent downturn is forcing him to re-evaluate his career goals. He admits that if he were “a little bit more aggressive I could probably have more classes right now because of all the colleges that are here.” But without a car, he says, he’s limited to teaching at colleges that are close to one another.
And after applying for three or four full-time jobs each year around the country, “I’m getting tired of chasing the carrot at the end of the stick,” says Mr. Davis. “It’s disappointing because you’re taught all your life if you work hard, you’ll be rewarded.” He has been dabbling in other money-making opportunities, such as freelance writing or publishing, from which he might fashion a new career. “I’ll look at teaching part time to help supplement whatever I end up doing, instead of the other way around.”
The pragmatism that Mr. Davis has reluctantly begun to embrace was an underlying factor in Paul V. Anderson’s decision to teach as an adjunct in the first place. While pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literary studies at Northwestern University, he had to string together adjunct teaching jobs in the area for several years to support himself as he completed his dissertation. As an adjunct, he learned firsthand that “the single most important thing to have was health insurance,” says Mr. Anderson, who worked in college admissions before going to graduate school.
Shortly after defending his dissertation, he started work as an academic adviser at the University of Chicago, in August 2006. A year later, the City Colleges of Chicago’s Wilbur Wright College, where he had previously applied for a full-time teaching job, contacted him about being an instructor for an evening introduction-to-humanities course.
Teaching there was particularly attractive to Mr. Anderson because the college’s curriculum focuses on using primary texts, just like his alma mater, St. John’s College, in Maryland.
“I thought, This is a place where I could fit into the culture,” says Mr. Anderson, whose teaching experience began about 15 years ago when he was a graduate student. “It was always difficult for me to turn down an opportunity to teach a class. It’s part of who I am as a professional.”
Mr. Anderson, 46, also teaches a core humanities course at the University of Chicago twice a week during his lunch hour. That work, he says, helps him in his job as an adviser because he sees students as students, not advisees with abstract problems.
A Balancing Act
Using adjunct teaching to provide balance in their lives, like Mr. Anderson does, is a common theme among adjuncts, particularly those seeking to level the work-life seesaw.
Nancy Christensen, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry, first worked as an adjunct when her son, now in high school, was a baby. She taught a night chemistry class at Waubonsee Community College that met twice a week. Her husband, also a chemist, worked during the day. “We did that so we wouldn’t have to leave him with anybody,” she says.
Ms. Christensen, who also has a middle-schooler and another child in high school, taught at Waubonsee for eight years before her family moved to Texas. She didn’t teach there, but instead homeschooled her children. Then her family moved back to the Chicago area, and with her children enrolled in school, Ms. Christensen she came back to Waubonsee. This time around she teaches two classes that meet during the day so she can be at home when her children return from school.
“Between lectures and labs, I’m out there every day even though I only have two classes,” says Ms. Christensen, who lives about 10 miles from the college. Still, the flexibility can’t be beat. Once, Ms. Christensen was scheduled to teach classes that conflicted with her children’s schedules. She was able to make a switch almost immediately. “Once they get people they really like, they really work to get a schedule that works for you,” she says.
At some point, when her children are out of the house, she would like to work full time at a community college. But for now, “my working as an adjunct is the trade-off we’ve chosen,” Ms. Christensen, 48, says. “It’s really working well for us.”
Others seeking harmony between work and life find that a part-time teaching job can be an important link to the career they chose to forgo. Vicky Bush-Joseph left behind a law career seven years ago. The lawyer and mother is now in her 12th year of teaching an adoption-law class at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law. Her alma mater asked her to teach the course as a way to build up the school’s child-law program.
“I stopped working in my downtown firm, but I kept teaching the class,” Ms. Bush-Joseph says. “It was my contact with work.”
Ms. Bush-Joseph says the class keeps her “intellectually challenged and stimulated. I have to keep on top of everything so I can teach my students.” Her Thursday evening class of 23 students is also a conversation starter. “When I say I teach a law-school class, people always want to know what adoption law is,” Ms. Bush-Joseph says. “I’m happy to explain it.”
Jennifer O’Riordan also relishes the stimulation. Her first foray into teaching as an adjunct, back in 2002, stemmed from a desire to “keep her mind active,” she says. “I was driving my kids around one day, right before they got driver’s licenses, and I thought, I have a master’s degree in psychology. Why am I a taxi driver?”
A friend suggested that she teach psychology as an adjunct, and Ms. O’Riordan, although doubtful that she could get hired, applied at Joliet Junior College, about 25 minutes from her home. Two weeks before the start of the semester, two sociology courses—what was available at the time—were hers to teach. “I found out that this was really my gift,” says Ms. O’Riordan, who now teaches psychology.
But what began as a way to expand her life beyond motherhood has morphed into a platform for a cause: better pay and work conditions for adjuncts. Ms. O’Riordan is now active in the adjunct-faculty union at Joliet.
“My work with the union has put me in touch with issues in higher education that I wasn’t really familiar with,” Ms. O’Riordan says. “I’ve learned so much, and it’s exciting and interesting to me. That’s another reason why I keep teaching. I like being a part of that big picture.”
Ms. O’Riordan, whose husband works as a clinical psychologist, doesn’t have to rely on the money she makes as an adjunct. Still, she finds it “personally fulfilling” to stand up for those for whom a bigger paycheck makes a difference.
Teaching vs. Money
The desire for more money is shared by many adjuncts, of course. But for some, it can be overpowered by the desire to teach. Bettina Maravolo, who has taught political and social science at Truman College for five years now, wasn’t sure at first, after earning a master’s degree in political science, that she wanted to teach. So instead she opted to join corporate America and took a job as a community-relations manager at a national bookstore chain. “As I was working with educators to put together educational programs back then, I realized that I wanted to be the educator myself.”
It was a timely realization. She was already applying for teaching jobs when her company laid her off in the summer of 2003. In the spring of 2004, Ms. Maravolo, 46, taught her first class at Truman.
Sometimes Ms. Maravolo isn’t in the classroom but is teaching just the same. She teaches two online classes for the City Colleges Center for Distance Learning and is working to earn a master online teaching certificate.
But her enthusiasm about her work has been dampened somewhat by the uncertainties that go along with being an adjunct. This semester was the third in a row in which her typical three-course load at Truman was cut to two.
Ms. Maravolo also works as an assistant at a small library in the area, designing fliers and posters for its youth-services department, and the money she earns there helps. “I’m fortunate because I also have other skills,” says Ms. Maravolo
But still she is drawn to the classroom. “Seeing the students that come there ready to learn and overcome their circumstances—it’s inspiring,” Ms. Maravolo says. “Their diversity is just incredible, and you have all sorts of age groups in the mix. I love to meet them. I love teaching and being in the classroom.”
