Working as an Adjunct Professor-by Devi Nina Bingham

 

This essay (Berke, 2023) confirmed what I’d read in a textbook in a prior college course about obtaining a career in academics. The author discussed the benefits and drawbacks of working as an adjunct professor at a university. She stated, "But many people don't realize "adjunct" is a fancy word for part-time contract work."

Contract workers are comparable to self-employed individuals. There is little or no benefits, no paid time off, no summer employment if you are a teacher, and no contract renewal is assured. As the author put it, "but many don't realize "adjunct" is a fancy word for part-time contract work." Being an adjunct may be excellent if you have a second source of income, and health insurance. If not, you may not be able to count on it as your sole source of income. Fortunately, I have a consistent part-time income as an Author that covers my expenses, so an adjunct post would work for me.

When discussing remuneration, the author admits to all the time you will need to spend outside of class hours: "...office hours, emails, lesson planning, grading, letters of recommendation, emotional labor, and miscellaneous tasks all add up." I'm not sure how much time this will take because I've never taught in an academic setting before, I'm not sure how to compute this. However, before accepting a position, you should estimate how much time other teachers spend so you can obtain a fair image of how much you would be paid per hour.

Working as an adjunct professor would be a terrific opportunity to obtain teaching experience and improve your career, but the compensation would be lower than that of tenured academics. According to this article, securing a full-time teaching position may be tough, which means you may be an adjunct instructor for the majority of your career before finding an institution that hires you full-time, if you ever do. An adjunct position appears to be excellent for someone like me who has previously had a full-time career and is now searching for part-time work, and a second career.

                                                     

                                                    Works Cited

Christina Berke. The Realities of Working as a College Adjunct Professor. EdSurge. 2023. www.edsurge.com/news/2023-02-09-the-realities-of-working-as-a-college-adjunct-       professor.com