The “adjunct” professor grows by the day more prominent in American universities, though the category itself is loosely defined. Some academics, and some institutions, use the term as an equivalent to “part-time and non-tenure-track.” But many of those institutionally contracted as “adjuncts” pick up enough teaching work to be considered full-time (though often without the benefits and protections that would otherwise be provided), and what many colleges call “lecturers” would fit the same description. Of the scarce studies of working conditions for adjuncts nationally, most rely on self-reported adjunct status.
In New York, though, the term is a tad clearer. An adjunct, around these parts, is generally either a graduate student who’s taken on a teaching assignment beyond that required by their graduate fellowship (generally a minimum of one class per semester) or an older academic who never managed to get tenure or never entered the tenure-track. A 2020 report at Inside Higher Ed described the condition of adjuncts as a “nightmare” in which “25 percent…rely on public assistance, and 40 percent struggle to cover basic household expenses” because of a typical yearly income of $25,000. The same report quotes the American Federation of Teachers’ gentle prediction that this situation would become “more perilous” post-pandemic. This turned out to be a gross understatement.
The situation here’s been volatile as a bottle of ether for years, and several of the folks I talked to have either been under attack for other statements or been fired from New York universities in the past year or two as a result of a wave of strikes organized by graduate teachers and adjuncts.