The Adjunct Hustle

A deep dive into what it’s like to work as an adjunct art professor

I’ve had this newsletter idea in my mind since I started this Substack in the summer of 2023. If you’ve ever wondered what an artist means when they talk about their job “adjuncting”, this is it.

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I was recently asked about my decision to get an MFA, with the implication that the inquiring artist was seeking to determine if an MFA program was a plausible next-step for them. Artists have many reasons for getting (or not getting) the terminal Fine Arts degree here in the USA. It’s a complicated decision, but mine was largely driven by the desire to teach college-level art classes.

I was already teaching K-12 where I learned that I not only liked teaching, I was good at it. As my high school teaching career improved, my art making suffered. My teaching job was very demanding and I was making artwork when I could, but not as often as I wanted. My personal art career was not seen as something that added value to my position as a high school art teacher.

I realized that if I could land a full-time (ideally tenured-track) position at a university, that I might have the best of both worlds: stable career teaching and earning income + benefits, while being encouraged and supported to advance my personal visual art career. Thus, I worked diligently to get my MFA (2017) and be hired for my first college-level teaching position as an adjunct (2020).

I’ve been adjunct teaching since spring 2020, over 5 years now. Adjunct teaching is contract teaching, where one is hired on a per-semester basis to teach a single class. I have a lot to share about my experiences as an adjunct thus far (and still going).

The podcast that mirrors my life (and inspired the title of this newsletter)

Want to know everything about adjunct teaching in the arts? Listen to this amazing interview with Emily Cobb on the podcast Perceived Value by Sarah Rachel Brown.

In this episode, Emily shares all about adjunct teaching in visual arts. What it is, how it works, how much she earns, all of it—the good, the bad, and the ugly!

My similarities:

• Paid by the contact hour (at 3 out of 5 schools; I also have 1 school that pays by course hour and 1 that pays by student)

• Supervisors and teams have been sympathetic to the “adjunct hustle” and supportive in all they ways that they can; but I’ve still had classes drop at the last minute and classes that can’t be confirmed until right before the semester starts

• Working as an adjunct is a passion project in some respects; but mainly an investment in a future goal to work as a full-time faculty

My differences:

• I applied for these jobs and was interviewed in the style of the “adjunct pool” when I was in Houston; now that I’m in Fort Wayne where the art community is smaller and well-connected, I found my positions based on networking

• In Houston I made my own course and syllabi, but was sometimes given a required textbook; here in Fort Wayne I’ve been given the syllabi and course materials

• Another benefit I’ve experienced is being able to use the school facilities. This fall when I taught printmaking, I was encouraged and welcome to use the printmaking lab for my own art making

My money:

• I get paid between $1200-3200 per 3 credit hour course. This feels like a big swing, but the larger 2400-3200 compensation is when I have a studio class at an institution that pays by the contact hour (studio courses meet for 6 hours/week instead of the typical 3 for a lecture style class)

• When I was working “full time” as an adjunct by hustling together a full time course load from multiple schools, I made 20-30K annually

The podcast that gives me hope for that one-day teaching position

Lest you think that the conversation with Emily Cobb is done in that first episode, Sarah Rachel Brown follows up with Emily after her first year working in a full-time tenured-track art faculty position. This episode is more conversational than the first, as Emily shares about moving to a new state and starting at a new program.

Note: These episodes are from 2017 and 2018. Both Emily and Sarah have moved on to new positions and new experiences since then, however their conversation about adjunct teaching is still very relevant.

The shift to the Adjunct Model

This research starter from EBSCO is so helpful to summarize the shift that has happened in higher education to what is being called the “Adjunct Model.” If this topic interests you, I highly recommend clicking over to the article to read a well-researched summary on this topic.

“An adjunct teacher is added to a college's tenured faculty to teach extra courses. Mcardle (2002) points out that originally, an adjunct teaching arrangement was a special arrangement generally for professionals who wanted to teach a few courses so as to give students an inside point of view for the student's profession of interest. Mcardle gives several examples: "the successful sculptor who lectured passionately about art, the lawyer who taught criminal justice, the stockbroker who described her daily work to business majors" (p. 25). Thus, traditionally an adjunct lecturer was usually someone with a full-time career who probably wanted to teach university students more for recognition and prestige than for money, or perhaps to "give something back." In any case, adjunct lecturers were the exceptions within an educational system filled with tenure-track professors.

However, in the 1990's a quite different type of adjunct instructor began to teach at universities. This new type of adjunct usually had earned a Ph.D. and had excellent credentials, but could not find a full-time teaching job. Mcardle notes that, "because there's now a glut of these part-time instructors, they'll work cheap, earning a fraction of what full-time professors make" (p. 26). Also, because colleges and universities are facing difficult budget constraints, these schools may be more inclined to hire adjuncts to save money.

The number of adjuncts versus the number of tenured professors has seen a dramatic shift in percentages in the last several decades. Mcardle notes that in the early 1980s, only about 20 percent of all courses across the country were taught by adjuncts while the rest were taught by full-time, tenured faculty (2002, p. 26). Feldman and Turnley (2001) also note that, in 1968, only 20 percent of all faculty were adjuncts, whereas in 2001 the number had doubled to 40 percent (p. 1). In 2006, Benton noted that as of 2003 the number of adjuncts had reached 46 percent (p. 10). Bousquet (2009) said that "at the present rate of decline, the next two decades will see the percentage of tenured and tenure-track professors plunge into the single digits" ("The Faculty of the Future," p. 4). Thus, in fifty years time—from 1980 to 2030—American colleges and universities will most likely have gone from 80 percent tenured faculty to 10 percent—a 70 percent decrease. Indeed, a 2009 survey showed that 75 percent of faculty in higher education were adjunct (Coalition on the Academic Workforce, 2012).”

(EBSCO, 2021)

The rationalization for the shift in the adjunct model is largely based on economics. When universities increase the number of contract workers, they benefit financially by outsourcing the teaching labor to the adjuncts who are working for less pay and fewer benefits. (EBSCO, 2021)

The result has larger impacts than just on an institutions’ economics. As adjunct faculty increases, there are valid concerns that the quality of the programs decreases (EBSCO, 2021). Adjunct faculty are only hired to teach, their job description and compensation does not cover any service investment back into the university community. Things such as extracurricular clubs, student advising, lab/studio hours, department events, and other important program enhancements now fall on the reduced full-time faculty work force. The effect can be a slow dwindling of a robust and vibrant department, to one that feels transactional and harried.

Adjuncts on strike

In the last 5 years there have been several news-worthy strikes by union workers at universities for the sake of protecting adjunct workers’ rights. I was closely following the strike in 2022 at The New School in New York City where “…those untenured, part-time adjuncts make up a whopping 90% of the faculty. Their part-time status is a reflection of a predatory status quo, not their worth or workloads.” (Kelly, 2022)

The Guardian’s article dives into the strike at Columbia College in Chicago, discussing how budget cuts are largely to blame for the large number of adjuncts, but that working conditions in general are negatively impacting the school experience for the adjuncts and students alike. (Sainato, 2023).

If we continue to see the adjunct model persist at our higher educational institutions, adjunct faculty unions will be part of an important voice in establishing fair working conditions for the adjunct faculty.

My career experience thus far

When I started looking for a college-level teaching position I was advised to look for adjunct positions as the starting point to build my work experience. Most of my professors started as adjuncts before landing their full time faculty positions.

Since starting in 2020, I’ve adjuncted at 5 different institutions. In Houston, I was working in what I would call a full-time adjunct capacity where I was working at multiple institutions at the same time and averaging 4 studio courses per semester. A 4 studio course workload is beyond what is typically considered a full time load for a single faculty member with a permanent position at a university.

This is common. Many of the other adjuncts I taught with were traveling back and forth between the same set of schools, teaching a full load of classes but spread over several schools, like me. We used to joke that we could high-five on the highway as we passed each other each day commuting between campuses. It was dark humor, masking our frustration at an obvious reality: if we were all teaching full loads split over these schools, how come each school wouldn’t just hire one of us to be full time and cut this adjunct nonsense?

Two of the universities where I was working as an established adjunct held job searches for a full-time (not tenured) faculty position while I was employed there. In both instances, I applied for the job, hoping to see my years of service launch me to the next level. At one school, I made it to the last interview with the school president as one of two final candidates. I was not selected, but I am happy to say that both final candidates were adjunct faculty that the department was seeking to promote. At the other school, they declined to interview any current adjuncts (although we were encouraged to apply) and instead chose to bring in new talent.

I asked my chair about this decision as I exited that job upon my move to Fort Wayne, and I was given an honest but tough-to-swallow answer: keeping excellent adjuncts as adjuncts was easier than promoting them and then finding new excellent adjuncts. He said I was one of two (again!) adjuncts that they would have interviewed, but decided that it was best for the department not to promote either of us. They had a better likelihood of bringing in top talent into a full time position than promoting and then hiring talent into the adjunct role.

It has become clear that as the nationwide faculty landscape changes to the adjunct model, that there is not room in the pipeline for all the current adjuncts to find their way to full time positions—and even if there is, it seems that promoting adjuncts is not always a priority. My experience suggests that those of us currently working as adjuncts are likely to stay at this level.

I suspect that the best chance I have of securing a full time faculty position is to be willing to apply in a nationwide search, because promotion from adjunct to full time most often requires moving to a new institution. This reality feels defeating. I am privileged to be supported by a partner whose full time job and benefits support my family (and my ability to cobble together an adjunct hustle and artist career in the first place). We are rooted to where his steady job is located; moving my family to chase job promotion is not a simple proposition.

As I close this essay, I can’t help but wonder if I will reach a point when being a career adjunct is no longer serving me. How do the benefits of the prestige, connections, flexibility, and love of teaching weigh out against the low pay, lack of benefits, and scheduling instability?

A positive take on adjuncting

In the recent months, I’ve had the happy experience of hearing from two established and successful artists who are very satisfied with their adjunct teaching status. I feel compelled to add this positive note at the bottom of this essay because it reminds me that every situation, every person is different and needs different things.

Both of these artists are content with the part-time teaching model of adjuncting as it keeps them connected to teaching, offers the benefits of connecting them to a university, and provides some steady income, all while giving them time to work in the studio. One of the artists is in a position that is considered labeled as a “full-time adjunct” which means that they receive health care benefits from their institution even though they are on a contract status, which is a significant benefit!

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In the comments, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is this anything like your peronal experience working in academia or other industries? Do you adjunct? Has your experience been like mine? Different? Are you a student with thoughts on how the adjunct model impacts your learning experience?

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References + links

Brown, Sarah Rachel (host). (August 14, 2017). The Adjunct Hustle: A conversation with Emily Cobb [Audio podcast episode] in Perceived Value. https://www.perceivedvaluepodcast.com/home/2017/8/14/the-adjunct-hustle-a-conversation-with-emily-cobb

EBSCO (2021). Adjunct Teaching. Research Starters. Accessed on June 29, 2025. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/adjunct-teaching#:~:text=Economic%20pressures%20on%20colleges%20and,to%2075%25%20in%20some%20institutions.

Kelly, Kim (December 20, 2022). The New School’s adjunct professors’ strike shows how even “good” jobs are increasingly precarious. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90827013/new-school-strike-adjunct-professors-what-it-means

Sainato, Michael. (December 10, 2023) ‘If this was about money, we’d still be teaching’: inside the longest adjunct strike in US history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/10/part-time-faculty-columbia-college-longest-strike#:~:text=The%20strike%20has%20thrown%20a,job%20security%20and%20low%20pay.