Class Warfare: Adjunct Professors

The army of part-time professors teaching at the region's colleges are merely working stiffs at the bottom of an enormous and lucrative enterprise.

Feeling Crunched

How part-time faculty stack up, by the numbers.

$76,600
Average salary for a full-time instructional faculty in the 2011-2012 academic year.

$86,490
Median salary for a postsecondary-education administer in 2012.

$4,000
Average per-course pay for Massachusetts adjuncts.

500%
Increase in tuition costs since 1985.

42.1%
Increase in the number of part-time faculty between 1970 and 2003.

$35,000
Average reported annual income of more than half of the part-time faculty teaching in the U.S.

23%
Average increase in earnings when a service worker is unionized, as of 2013.

 

Sources: U.S. Department of Labour Bureau of Labor Statistics, Chronicle of High Education, Adjunct Project.