Adjunct Project Reveals Wide Range in Pay - Audrey Williams June and Jonah Newman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

The site is designed to make it easy for many more adjuncts to add information. The nature of the project makes it a work in progress, but a snapshot of what about 1,800 adjuncts at 1,050 colleges had reported about their institutions as of late last month shows pay disparities across types of colleges and disciplines and a dearth of health and retirement benefits available to adjuncts in general. Many adjuncts have also indicated that they are essentially shut out of participating in most forms of governance. The overall average pay reported by adjuncts is $2,987 per three-credit course. Adjuncts at 16 colleges reported earning less than $1,000. The highest pay reported is $12,575, in the anthropology department at Harvard University. A new Web site, http://adjunct.chronicle.com, started this month, allows data to be sorted and compared by department, college, and region of the country. It displays information that adjuncts have reported about working conditions, such as whether they participate in shared governance, are part of a union, and receive health insurance and retirement benefits. http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Project-Show-Wide/136439