I have seen the issue of pay and benefits for adjunct professors being publicized a bit more in the past year than before, but many people still are oblivious about it, including students and tenured professors. What's happening is adjunct professors at universities get paid very small amounts for each class they teach (often below living wages for their area), often don't receive benefits, and they do not have their own labs or grad students to help them do research. Consequently, some are experiencing drastic poverty, and despite working sometimes more hours than tenured professors at a university (which have high pay and a guaranteed job for life), they have to take side jobs as well just to make ends meet. This is all despite often having a PhD degree - they simply weren't able to get one of those very competitive tenure-track professorships. (Also, sometimes graduate students or recent grads take adjunct positions temporarily but may not stay in them for their careers).
To compare numbers, one adjunct professor makes $2,987 for each of two classes she teaches per semester (the nationwide average pay). Let's say she is able to teach two classes each during fall, spring and summer semesters (which may not always be the case). Then her annual income would be $17,922 (less than most PhD students in the sciences receive for their stipends, even if they TA a course each semester). Compare this to a distinguished professor that makes $144,000 a year. Often, they only have to teach a single class (or none, for having a distinguished level) per year, and can spend the rest of their time conducting research, writing papers and getting grant funding, and becoming well-known authorities in their subject areas in the academic community.
I think that fixing this wage discrepancy, and everything else that goes along with it (considering adjuncts full-time if they are working more than 40 hours a week on teaching, providing benefits and including them in faculty meetings, etc.) should be made a priority in academia, especially because these people are still helping to educate our next generation of young minds, and are often better teachers than tenured faculty.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/20/22326956-class-divide-on-campus-adjunct-professors-fight-for-better-pay-benefits
To compare numbers, one adjunct professor makes $2,987 for each of two classes she teaches per semester (the nationwide average pay). Let's say she is able to teach two classes each during fall, spring and summer semesters (which may not always be the case). Then her annual income would be $17,922 (less than most PhD students in the sciences receive for their stipends, even if they TA a course each semester). Compare this to a distinguished professor that makes $144,000 a year. Often, they only have to teach a single class (or none, for having a distinguished level) per year, and can spend the rest of their time conducting research, writing papers and getting grant funding, and becoming well-known authorities in their subject areas in the academic community.
I think that fixing this wage discrepancy, and everything else that goes along with it (considering adjuncts full-time if they are working more than 40 hours a week on teaching, providing benefits and including them in faculty meetings, etc.) should be made a priority in academia, especially because these people are still helping to educate our next generation of young minds, and are often better teachers than tenured faculty.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/20/22326956-class-divide-on-campus-adjunct-professors-fight-for-better-pay-benefits