Are part-time professors the new norm?

Collage by Matias Pacheco-Ramirez, Photographer

Adjunct faculty may be replacing their full-time counterparts, as they now make up 40% of the higher education workforce.

These part-time employees are typically paid at an hourly rate or per credit taught, and their pay is influenced by their education level and the major they are instructing — making them an economical alternative to full-time faculty who receive annual salaries.

The private university workforce is nearly 46% adjuncts, while part-time faculty only comprise 37% of public institutions.

Chapman currently employs 590 part-time faculty who receive hourly wages and 595 full-time faculty whose stipends vary by discipline. However, how adjuncts are distributed among colleges varies vastly.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) found that adjuncts make up 32% of the national faculty in liberal arts and humanities.

In Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, courses led by part-time and full-time instructors are nearly evenly split this semester. Mary Shockey, Wilkinson’s event coordinator, said 48.5% of courses offered this spring are taught by adjuncts.

Peter Cibula, an adjunct professor in Wilkinson, said adjunct faculty commonly teach lower-division or general education classes, often being the first professors undergraduates interact with in their college careers.

“The fact that these courses are there and needed every year means that (there are) teaching jobs that could be taught by tenure-track faculty,” said Cibula. “(Instruction by adjuncts is) something akin to taking an Uber, since most adjuncts have no job protections and are fundamentally gig workers.”

Cibula is also a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine School of Humanities.

“UC Irvine’s budget model is prioritizing larger lectures and thus decreasing funding for small courses,” he said. “Last year they laid off many contingent faculty and this year are poised to potentially do the same … If budgets begin getting leveraged against particular colleges at Chapman, you’ll likely notice a similar shrinkflation effect: your tuition will give you less value, and you’ll be paying it longer.”

In the Schmid College of Science and Technology, 30% of classes are taught by part-time faculty, and an additional 7% are taught by graduate student instructors, said Rebecca Green, the operations administrator for Schmid.

Co-director of the physics program, Matthew Leifer, said that while he cannot speak for all of Schmid, the number of adjunct professors hired in the physics department has decreased dramatically over the last few years, and he does not foresee hiring adjuncts in the coming year.

“In my view, being an adjunct should not be a permanent, full-time career,” said Leifer. “It is not a sustainable position financially. However, it will always be necessary to have some adjuncts to cover unexpected instructor shortfalls (or) temporary leaves and to give junior instructors valuable teaching experience.”

Slightly fewer courses in the Argyros School of Business and Economics are being taught by adjuncts this semester. Associate Dean Amy Hurley-Hanson said approximately 25% of spring courses are taught by part-time faculty. 

Chapman’s School of Pharmacy relies almost entirely on full-time faculty. Jason Yamaki, an associate professor for the School of Pharmacy, said only one of the 29 courses offered this spring is taught by a non-full-time instructor, which is about 3%.

Employing more adjunct faculty in the humanities rather than STEM is not unique to Chapman.

The same CUPA-HR study found adjuncts make up 3% of engineering faculty, 6% of physical science faculty, 8% of biological science faculty and 11% of both math and computer science faculty.

These differences come as departments structure courses based on factors such as program requirements, enrollment and available faculty.

History Professor William Cumiford said that the fact that Wilkinson houses many courses that count toward graduation requirements increases demand for adjunct faculty.

“You have to take English and languages, so they need part-time help,” Cumiford said.

He added that most foreign language instructors are part-time, and he has noticed the English department increasing the number of courses offered.

Cumiford began as an adjunct at Chapman in 1992, but has been full-time for 30 years and has seen various types of part-time professors.

“At Chapman, we have very dedicated part-time people,” he said. “One of my colleagues works hours just to teach a few classes.”

On the other hand, he said there are “freeway fliers” who jump from campus to campus to earn their paycheck but offer little more than that.

Cumiford also attributes job demand to the disparities amongst adjuncts across fields.

“There are a lot of people looking for work in humanities degrees, whereas in mathematics they (can) go work for big corporations,” Cumiford said. “We have great math (full-time and adjuncts) working here now, but they could be working somewhere else for a lot of money.”

The increased use of adjuncts nationwide has begun to worry some college faculty, whether they are full or part-time.

“In higher education, the increasing number of people who are adjuncting across multiple institutions as their only job for multiple years is very worrying,” Leifer said. “I hope we can buck this trend at Chapman as we have done in the physics program.”

Cibula also believes that part-time employees should be used in moderation.

“Temporary work should only be used as an emergency,” he said. “However, as the university exists now, the percentage of students being taught by contract workers is rapidly rising to levels where we should question what a university is anymore.”