Roughly half of George Mason’s instructional staff is made up of adjunct faculty. Non-tenured faculty make, on average, $14,000 a semester in the U.S. and face increased job instability compared to their tenured counterparts. (Detra Bell / Fourth Estate)

American universities overwork and underpay the contingent faculty they rely on

BY LEEN EL-ALI, STAFF WRITER

Instructors are an integral part of each university student’s academic life. To the average student, interaction between them and their instructor is standard procedure: attend a lecture, submit the assigned homework, study for an exam and repeat. It’s a routine that doesn’t elicit much thought. 

But what many students don’t realize is that — beyond the two-hour lectures — their instructors face a world of struggle and exploitation. 

The issue lies in the university system’s over-reliance on contingent faculty to facilitate educational instruction. According to the American Association of University Professors, the term contingent faculty “includes both part- and full-time faculty who are appointed off the tenure track.” 

This encompasses all instructional faculty who are hired by the university with no guarantee of a permanent job.  

The conditional nature of contingent employment, its poor compensation and the absence of university support places immense pressure on educators. 

This pressure can go so far as to drive them completely out of academia. The American Federation of Teachers found that over 66% of the contingent faculty members surveyed contemplated leaving academia from 2020 to 2022. 

Among the most pressing issues driving educators out is the unstable nature of the job. Contingent employment is a type of “casual labor” that employers seek out on an as-needed basis. In the same survey, three out of four respondents stated that their “employment is only guaranteed for a term or semester at a time.” This breeds a grueling cycle of job insecurity.  

That insecurity pressures educators to adjust their lives in order to hurriedly accommodate for a teaching gig. When asked how far in advance respondents were notified of their employment before the semester, almost 22% said they were notified only two weeks or less in advance. 

Dr. Simone Kolysh, an academic coach and a former adjunct instructor at the City University of New York, said they “started using the word precarious” to describe what it feels like to be subjected to such unstable employment conditions. 

When given these last-minute offers, they said they felt “desperate and unsure as to whether [their] entire schedule will even work” for both the semester and their personal life. 

Kolysh said they pursued a contingent faculty position in order to support themselves through their graduate degree.  

Dr. Kolysh’s case is not unique — in fact, many contingent faculty members are graduate students who are financially dependent on their contingent employment. The instability of their livelihoods is made even more outrageous when graduate students are expected to juggle an unpredictable employment status and last-minute contractual offers on top of their own academic pursuits.  

Kolysh stated that in order to pay for their graduate degree, they would have to teach “four or five courses a semester.” Kolysh did this while also attending “four to five classes” for their own degree. This brings to light another flagrant issue posed by the system — shocking underpayment.

Contingent instructors are paid based on the number of courses they teach. The amount of compensation is adjusted based on how many credits the course is worth. In 2025, the average pay per credit hour for adjuncts in the United States was $1,166. In total, a full-time course load – four three-credit classes – would make about $14,000 a semester. 

This compensation is egregious considering that the average cost of living for a family of four in the United States is $80,352. A former adjunct professor in Atlanta who asked to remain anonymous expressed his frustration with “how much work instructing [was] in relation to the pay.” 

He disclosed that during his time as an adjunct, he would be compensated a mere $7,000 for teaching three courses a semester.

Adjuncts at George Mason University are no strangers to underpayment. At the George Mason School of Business, an adjunct instructor in the spring semester of 2022 would receive $5,775 for teaching a 3-credit undergraduate course — only $23,000 a semester for a full-time course load. 

When asked about his compensation, a former adjunct professor at Mason who asked to remain anonymous stated that he was compensated only $16,000 for four courses.

American universities over-rely on contingent faculty. According to the American Association of University Professors, over 68% of university and college faculty members held contingent positions in 2023. 

This accounts for a majority of higher-level educators in the United States. At George Mason University, over 47% of the university’s instructional labor is made of adjunct positions. 

Education is the very foundation on which the university is built on. Students attend these institutions with the prospect of receiving an education, and contingent faculty members are doing the heavy lifting in providing students with one. It is shameful to know that the people keeping our institutions running — the foundations upon which our universities are built — are being underpaid, over-worked and exploited. 

Proper compensation, health benefits, and job security must be guaranteed for contingent faculty members at George Mason and beyond. Knowledge is the foundation of any functioning society, and our educators are the key to this knowledge. 

We must ensure their invaluable work guarantees them the basic right to live.