Systemic Racism, the Well-Known Secret Facing African-American Adjunct and Full-Time Faculty in Higher Education

As the landscape of higher education continues to tip more towards using or employing adjuncts, it is important to understand what factors contribute to adjunct faculty job satisfaction. Job satisfaction has been linked with faculty loyalty and faculty turnover. Previous research on adjunct faculty job satisfaction aggregates all types of adjunct faculty together, while little research investigates the job satisfaction of disaggregated types of adjunct faculty in higher education. The current study examines ex post facto faculty data from the National Science Foundation’s 2017 National Survey of College Graduates on 3,737 full-time and part-time faculty. Faculty were divided into three groups: unintentional adjunct faculty (those who want a full-time position), intentional adjunct faculty (those who elect to be part-time), and full-time faculty (tenure-track or tenured faculty). Overall job satisfaction was divided into two scales: intangible and financial satisfaction. The study found statistically significantly different results with intentional adjunct faculty reporting higher levels of intangible satisfaction when compared to unintentional adjunct and full-time faculty. Intentional adjuncts did not fall far behind full-time faculty on levels of financial satisfaction, but unintentional adjuncts were still the least satisfied financially. Results indicated that intentional adjunct faculty may choose their part-time status because of its flexibility in comparison to full-time faculty.

This chapter explores strategies to foster belonging among online non-traditional students and faculty in higher education. It introduces a “Culture of Care” framework focused on inclusivity, flexibility, and holistic support to promote engagement, retention, and persistence. Initially designed for student retention, this approach evolved into a university-wide culture, addressing the unique needs of students, full-time and adjunct faculty, and staff. Using examples from the University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC), the chapter highlights the importance of proactive communication, personalized interactions, and faculty-student relationships. It examines how non-college life events (NCLEs) impact student success and emphasizes initiatives like the Power of One and Project Finish Line. Personal reflections from the authors reveal how fostering belonging for students, full-time faculty, and adjunct faculty alike strengthens the entire learning community. Practical strategies are offered to engender and sustain a culture of belonging in online environments.

Adjuncts and the Academic Labor Force

The growing reliance on adjunct faculty in higher education has transformed instructional practices and raised critical questions about evaluation and reappointment. Although adjuncts constitute over half of the U.S. college teaching workforce, evaluation processes remain inconsistent. This study examines how two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Mississippi evaluate and reappoint adjunct faculty, focusing on decision-making models and institutional practices. It explores the use of multiple evaluation measures—such as student evaluations, peer observations, teaching portfolios, and administrative reviews—and critiques the limitations of relying solely on student feedback. Findings from the literature reveal a lack of standardized evaluation criteria, resulting in uneven accountability and limited faculty development. The study argues for systematic, multi-source evaluation approaches that promote fairness, enhance instructional quality, and align with institutional goals, emphasizing the need for data-driven strategies to strengthen adjunct faculty assessment at HBCUs and across higher.

Don’t Forget About the Adjuncts! is a work that creates space for adjuncts to share their experiences navigating workspaces within higher education and their experiences as part-time faculty. The primary goal of this book is to allow adjuncts to share their experiences navigating workspaces as frequently undervalues faculty in higher education. While frequently, adjunct faculty can feel unheard within higher education institutions, this book offers a platform for adjunct voices to be heard loud and clear.Contributing authors share the advantages and challenges they experience as adjuncts and the impact these experiences have on their well-being and career trajectory. Moreover, the authors provide insight and advice on how current and potential adjuncts can succeed and thrive, even with all the barriers or obstacles they face. The adjunct voices in this text have a wealth of knowledge and disciplines represented, expertise, and years of experience in higher education. Additionally, authors also come from all over the United States. With this range of expertise and knowledge, authors also provide advice, strategies, and ways of being for institutions to support their adjunct faculty and for adjuncts to support themselves.While many challenges are thrown at adjunct faculty, we are not suggesting that all adjunct faculty face the same issues. Moreover, this book serves as a space for contributing authors not to speak for all adjunct faculty but themselves. As editor and previous adjunct faculty myself, I encouraged and pushed all contributing authors to stand in their truth and take pride in this role. This book is the outcome of adjunct faculty loving and supporting their profession. Higher education institutions, colleagues, and other stakeholders can learn a great deal from the narratives and experiences shared to look at the intentional recruitment, retention, and psychological well-being of adjunct faculty. Thus, Don't Forget About the Adjuncts! is positioned to be a must-read for all higher education professionals, institutions, and stakeholders looking for strategies to do right by and for adjunct faculty.

Assess Your Adjuncts to Improve Student Learning

The issue of aging faculty in higher education

Although teaching remains the province of tenured and tenure-track professors in some elite colleges and universities in the United States, this arrangement is increasingly anomalous in many other institutions of higher learning. “Contingent professors” (here used interchangeably with the term “adjuncts”) refers to anyone teaching at the tertiary level who is not in the tenure stream. This entry refers principally to those with higher degrees who are paid by the course. The shift away from the tenure system may not have been as rapid as is often thought (it dates back at least some decades), but it is a sweeping change. Contingents now constitute a significant majority of academics. In 1969, over 78 percent of faculty were tenured or tenure-track; by 2009, that figure had declined to about 33 percent. Research faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows are not included in those figures; if they were, the overall representation of adjunct or contingent faculty in higher education would be considerably higher. Most contingent professors teach for a living; some may hope to land a tenure-track position. Others have full-time jobs and teach out of pleasure; yet others, having reached the end of their careers, prefer to teach at a more leisurely pace. Some do it for a short time, whereas others make a lifelong career of it. A considerable portion of non-tenured teachers in the United States are international graduate students or postdoctoral scholars, many of whom have financial, immigration, and communication challenges. What these educators have in common is that their jobs are insecure and can be terminated without review or explanation. The pay is low, sometimes close to minimum wage if examined on an hourly basis; more often than not, those paid by the course receive no benefits. Once hailed as the road to equality, higher education is now imparted in a context of stark inequity—a two-tier system in which some have a job for life, and others can be dismissed at any time. When the policy of paying faculty by the course is defended by institutional leaders, it is often with reference to the purported goal of achieving a certain nimbleness in matching the workforce with changing enrollments, the need to balance budgets, and an alleged surplus of scholars with advanced degrees. However, the inequity in pay, benefits, and working conditions is so stark that discussion of adjuncts has moved beyond the mere denunciation of their working conditions to an increased interest in improving those conditions. Nevertheless, the status of adjuncts raises many questions. How does this policy affect student learning? What does it mean that most professors now lack traditional academic protections of freedom of speech? Is it acceptable that the majority of academics are excluded from institutional decisionmaking while also lacking any clear path toward advancement on the job? Are unions addressing the needs of adjunct professors?

This paper presents a critical overview of the sociological research on Black women's experiences as graduate students and faculty in higher education, with a focus on research since 1995. In interaction with the social inequalities of race and class, how are Black women faculty and graduate student’s experiences with sexism, racism, and classism reproduced within the institution of higher education? What kinds of policies have been implemented to address these problems? What changes, if any, have there been in the experiences of black women faculty and graduate students over time? How do Black women scholars fare in relation to their white and male counterparts in higher education? What suggestions do findings provide toward more equitable work experiences for Black women faculty and graduate students in higher education?

Background: With the global pandemic, higher education has experienced unparalleled changes with abrupt transitions to remote and online learning. Faculty are working to provide continuity of teaching and support to students whose lives have been disrupted; therefore, faculty are finding themselves managing distressed students with a wide range of issues, while also managing their own intrapersonal stress. Consequently, faculty may experience feelings of being psychologically overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted.Aim: This article informs faculty in higher education on the concept of compassion fatigue along with the symptoms, warning signs, and risk factors. In addition, protective factors, including self-care plans and coping strategies are addressed.Methods: A comprehensive review of the literature on compassion fatigue was conducted including the application of the construct to teaching and education. The literature review illuminates the use of compassion fatigue, originating from the scientific disciplines of counseling and traumatology, within an emerging line of research findings occurring amongst educators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: The literature demonstrates that compassion fatigue as a prospective, intrapersonal condition may potentially affect some faculty in higher education, and the proposed conceptual application of the construct to teaching and education can assist with acknowledging and understanding an important aspect of faculty mental health.Conclusions: Given the crisis surrounding the pandemic, it's essential for faculty to be aware of compassion fatigue in order to mitigate potential intrapersonal psychological and emotional consequences. Elucidating the symptoms and implications of compassion fatigue for faculty in higher education is part of a broader, overlooked issue on faculty mental health and wellness.

The international literature on adjunct faculty in higher education, including professional education, does not yet cover counsellor education in particular, although many programmes rely on the teaching services of experienced practitioners in adjunct faculty positions. This article reports on a small, exploratory study conducted with adjunct faculty members appointed to one-year, full time fellowships in the counsellor education programme in which the authors are full time academics. The study identifies the mutual benefits of this practice, to the practitioners who teach as adjunct faculty and to the counsellor education programme. It also identifies areas that are problematic. In view both of the identified benefits and the difficulties experienced, the authors discuss their responsibilities as permanent academic staff to the practitioners who teach as adjunct faculty. The authors suggest that programmes benefit from the ethic of hospitality that adjunct faculty can offer and invite academic staff to bring (un)conditional hospitality to the collegial relationship in counsellor education.

After a half decade of struggle since the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., what is the current state of diversity among faculty in higher education? Have the numbers of diverse faculty increased? Do diverse faculty members feel accepted and successful? How are diverse faculty members faring in their various roles in higher education? The special issue editors have completed the pilot study of a larger survey that queries the state of diverse faculty in higher education in the United States. Investigation included the areas of belonging (if and how a sense of belonging is developed), professional respect (how colleagues regard achievements), and the role of cultural broker (if and how functioning as a cultural broker influences peers, administrators, and/or diverse students). In addition to the results of the preliminary survey reported by the survey authors, diverse faculty members, both foreign-born and native-born, from various universities in the U. S. have added their personal experiences of struggle and triumph in the field of higher education.

Introduction: Workplace well-being is essential for professionals’ health and satisfaction, influencing organizational success. Among lecturers, including nursing faculty in higher education, high demands and publication pressure compromise well-being, with high levels of emotional exhaustion identified. Promoting well-being is crucial for student success, professional performance, and healthy academic environments. Therefore, it is essential for institutions to integrate development programs that include well-being promotion strategies, recognizing the workplace as a strategic setting for health and disease prevention, thereby improving teaching quality and professional satisfaction. Objectives: To map scientific evidence on the psychological well-being of higher education faculty. Methodology: Scoping review protocol based on Joanna Briggs Institute and PRISMA-ScR®. Research conducted in August 2025 using the descriptors “psychological well-being", “mental health”, “emotional well-being", “life satisfaction”, “burnout”, “stress”, “resilience”, “nursing faculty”, “nursing professors”, “nursing educators”, “academic staff”, “higher education”, “university” and “college” in MEDLINE Complete® (via PubMed®), SCOPUS®, CINAHL Complete®, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews®, MedicLatina® (via EBSCOhost®), and Consensus®. Studies on the psychological well-being of nursing faculty in higher education, in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, available in free full text, were considered. Selection will be done in Rayyan® by two independent reviewers, with a third reviewer resolving disagreements. Data will be organized in tables by the authors. Registered in Open Science Framework® (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/N7YHP). Conclusion: This scoping review will map the available evidence on the psychological well-being of nursing faculty in higher education, highlighting key constructs, risk and protective factors, and knowledge gaps to support future research and institutional strategies.

Some refer to the trend in higher education instruction as one that undermines academic excellence.(1) Others see it as way out of the financial squeeze on colleges and universities and as way to bring professional expertise into the classroom.(2)The debate centers on the effects of the growing number of part-time faculty on students and the effects of a system of benign neglect(3) on the part-time teachers. How do programs of journalism and mass communication fit into the picture? Historically, professionals taught specialized courses, particularly introductory editing and reporting classes. Although the number of news-editorial majors is in decline, adjuncts now also teach in growth areas, such as graphics, public relations and advertising.Is the use of adjuncts in journalism education prompted primarily by the need for special expertise or motivated by the desire to cover more classes for less money, as some say is the case in higher education?' Part-time teachers now fill positions vacated by full-time faculty or step into slots created especially for adjuncts in many disciplines at both four-year and junior colleges, partly in response to tougher economic times.(5)Estimates of adjunct use throughout all of higher education range from 38 percent(6) to 57 percent(7). In community colleges they account for 67 percent of all faculty.(8) Even before the most recent financial crisis in higher education, researchers who looked at the use of adjuncts in community colleges found that two new part-time positions were created for every new full-time position in an eight-year period.(9)Women and minorities make up the majority of the ranks of this growing army of adjuncts in all institutions.(10) Because the part-time pool is large, many institutions enjoy buyer's market in which they can pay low wages and offer few, if any, other benefits.(11)The result is sizeable portion of faculty in higher education who teach many of the required classes but have only tangential connections to the institution. Left unanswered are questions about what, if anything, schools are doing to orient these teachers to teaching and whether adjuncts' classroom performance is monitored and evaluated.While most research has focused on the growth of part-time teachers in higher education overall, few writers have discussed management of part-time teachers in communication and English units and in community colleges.(12)A literature search in journalism and mass communication turned up one study of adjuncts. It showed journalism adjuncts at three schools teach an average of 35.6 percent of students in skills classes and award As and Bs to more than two-thirds, rate higher than that of full-time faculty.(13)The purpose of this present study was three-fold. The first goal was to document on larger scale how and to what extent part-time faculty are being used to teach in college and university units with groups of courses labeled journalism and mass communication. The second goal was to look at hiring, orientation, supervision and evaluation practices and to compare accredited with non-accredited units. Researchers asked this question: Would the existence of accreditation guidelines make difference in the use and supervision of part-time faculty? The third objective was to obtain suggestions from administrators on ways to improve the use of such guidelines to benefit both students and adjuncts.MethodResearchers mailed 382 questionnaires to administrators at schools, departments and programs of journalism from 1989 list provided by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.(14) The first mailing went out in January 1990 followed by second in March. A total of 232 questionnaires were returned; however, only 214 proved usable for final response rate of 56 percent.The questionnaire was necessarily broad in an effort to document how and to what extent part-time faculty are being used in journalism and mass communication. …

Progress toward equitable gender representation among faculty in higher education has been “glacial” since the early 1970s (Glazer-Raymo, 1999; Lomperis, 1990; Trower & Chait, 2002). Women, who now make up a majority of undergraduate degree earners and approximately 46% of Ph.D. earners nationwide (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003), rarely make up more than 30% of faculty at Research Extensive universities. Although the total number of tenure-track women faculty in higher education has increased steadily for the past 35 years, this increase and women’s advancement through faculty ranks are described as excruciatingly slow (Valian, 1999).