I Care, but I’m Adjunct Faculty, Do I Get Paid Enough to Care? Understanding Adjunct Faculty’s Needs.

In a time when higher education institutions are relying more and more on adjunct faculty, how well do you know your adjunct faculty pool? Is your institution doing everything they can to retain the best adjuncts? Off-tenure track teachers, including adjunct faculty may be nearly 70% of the teachers at any given school (AAUP, n.d.). Research finds higher education adjunct teachers are very dedicated professionals, yet many are not satisfied with their workplaces (American Academic: A National Survey of Part-time/Adjunct Faculty, 2010).

To retain faculty, institutions need to consider an employee’s job satisfaction which greatly influences on the job performance. Pay satisfaction is one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction, but access to health benefits and job security are also vital (Hoyt, 2012; Dolan, 2011).

Faculty who are not tenured, including adjunct faculty with their unique life experiences, need support from their organizations to ensure their needs are being met. Adjuncts benefit from routine interactions, as well as reliable institutional resources such as student conduct offices and library support, especially considering today’s remote working environment (Eriksson et al., 2022). Recruitment and retention of diverse adjunct identities also directly translates to success for students who can ultimately better connect to faculty (Goldhaber et al., 2019). Sustaining adjuncts from many diverse identity groups can strengthen the courses themselves thus provide deeper student connections to content (Goldhaber et al., 2019).

Participants can expect to learn about key concerns of adjunct faculty which may be barriers to being dedicated and returning employees. Adjunct faculty care about their work and students, but how can you get adjunct faculty to show up to meetings or serve on committees? Presenter Forbes will have direct interactions with audience members throughout the talk.