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The Rise of the Adjunct
More colleges are relying on non-tenured instructors to teach their classes. Is that best for the students?
Have you ever wanted to be a college professor?
You could walk around a beautiful, wooded campus, listening to instructors spill wisdom on excited youths, all while wearing a wool sport coat with elbow patches.
Colleges, especially large state schools, are big places. They hire thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people to help them operate. From Administrators and professors to janitors and advisors, colleges require a massive amount of manpower to operate.
For many educators, myself included, the pinnacle of a career in education is to become a tenured professor at an esteemed university. A tenured role comes with the freedom, control, and monetary reward that many educators wish they could have. A tenured professor feels like the closest thing an educator can get to having a career that the public gives a crap about.
Tenured professors are also quite expensive, with the average salary close to six figures. Despite colleges increasing their tuition each year, they, like most of us, are always looking to save some money. Why pay a tenured professor six figures to teach a course when an outsider can teach the same class…
