Caring for Yourself as an Adjunct Faculty Member

Introduction

Adjunct faculty - also commonly referred to as contingent faculty - are part-time, temporary, higher education instructors employed tactically by institutional leadership as a financially advantageous directive (Bakley & Broderson, 2018). The conditional work of adjunct faculty is uncertain, as institutions typically have no responsibility to them beyond the immediate, current term (Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2014). For many years, various research articles and educational publications have been written on the topic of the exploitation of adjunct faculty in the community college and university systems. Brennan and Magness (2018) identified many news outlets and activists that held claims of adjuncts being exploited and asserted that these individuals should receive higher wages and better treatment. While there is substantial research and discussion on the treatment of adjunct faculty, there is a gap within the academic literature on how adjunct faculty can psychologically overcome their poor treatment, lack of benefits, and low wages by improving their self-efficacy and wellbeing.

The poor treatment of adjunct faculty has been a negative influence on their self-efficacy and wellbeing. Teaching, as a profession, is an emotionally taxing and stressful occupation (Kyriacou, 2001) that contributes to emotional exhaustion, the main component of burnout, a syndrome of emotional exhaustion that occurs often among individuals who work with people in various capacities (Maslach et al., 2001). On top of their low wages and lack of benefits, the lack of job security, job satisfaction, vacation and personal time, professional development opportunities, and lack of respect from university leadership all contribute to the self-efficacy of adjunct instructors (Ferencz, 2017). Common structural disadvantages for adjunct faculty include the aforementioned poor compensation, which often leads to the necessity to instruct at more than one school just to pay their bills, undependable scheduling – often obtaining the schedule at the very last minute – and staffing, lack of confidence with regard to job security, lack of professional development opportunities, and a dearth of motivation in relation to university mission and goals (Curtis et al., 2016). Additionally, Ott and Dippold (2018) also found that adjunct faculty were more likely to indicate economic need, and a majority of these faculty members self-identified as African American or Hispanic, illustrating an equity gap between adjunct and full-time faculty.

The lack of benefits and low wages also negatively contribute to the self-efficacy and wellbeing of adjunct faculty members. Adjunct faculty are compensated much less than full-time faculty, and do not typically have access to normally accessible benefits such as healthcare, retirement packages, or sick and vacation time (Balkey & Broderson, 2018). In addition, despite their terminal degrees and instructional experience, many adjunct faculty members rely financially on public assistance, as their wages put them below federal poverty guidelines (Flaherty, 2020). As recently as 2018, Brennan and Magness (2018) reported that on average, full-time instructors were paid $51,000 in salary per year, lecturers paid $57,000, and tenure-track assistant professors paid $71,000. Adjunct faculty members teaching a standard course load, however, were paid $21,600 per year with no benefits accessible to them (Brennan & Magness, 2018). University budgets are and have been constricted for some time (Gluckman, 2017), but the discrepancy in pay between full-time and adjunct faculty members is a large factor in the declining self-efficacy and wellbeing of adjuncts. The household budgets of adjunct faculty members have become strained from low wages (Ott & Dippold, 2018), and financial stress contributes to the emotional exhaustion of these individuals.