When I went to university I looked up the salaries at my university, because it was public records. The highest payed professor at my university was the head of the physics department, and he only made 77,000. About a third of the students taking his classes were likely to have a starting salary higher than what he made. The football coach was paid 500,000.

As a fellow former adjunct, thank you for this. Several colleagues and I built our lives and identities around teaching, and when we had to leave, it tore our hearts out. But the world demands that we have money for rent and groceries. Gerald Graff, in his book Clueless In Academe, points out that during the Cold War, Americans considered it our duty to invest in science, the humanities, and education. These weren't just abstract goods, they were a front in fighting Communism. A well-informed and educated society was, we believed, a free society. But then we won the Cold War, and promptly kicked down the ladder we had just ascended. Educated people proved harder to control, and didn't accept peanuts for their labor. Universities were seen as culpable for that. I forget who pointed out that the transition to adjuncts coincided with the rise of women in higher ed. As recently as the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom held that women lacked the abstract spark that made for good university professors. But once the field opened up to women, and they proved capable of the job, society's esteem for professors dried up. Job fields heavily dominated by women tend to pay poorly, and higher ed definitely followed the same trend.

As a college student, I often start every semester by looking up the salaries for my professors (since it’s all public). It doesn’t necessarily change how I treat them or approach the class, but it does make me think about where all that tuition money is going.

My community college experience suddenly went from: "wow no one really cared" to "oh, oh that's what was going on. Suddenly everything makes sense and is really depressing."

This reminds me so hard of all the "heroes" talk in the early pandemic months, people doing work that was crucial to keeping society afloat and being glorified in the mainstream media, but openly treated like shit by their employers. We talk about valuing education and "the children," but the numbers flat-out say the opposite.

When I was in college, I knew like two tweed men and one smart-shoe lady who seemed to be making it decent as teachers. I knew way more stressed undergrad TAs and well-meaning hard-studying teachers who could barely convince the higher-ups to let them fund classes they had so much passion for.

Hello Zoe. I’m a high school CTE teacher at a public school. A lot of people assume that I’d be so much better off as a college professor or a private school teacher. Of course, this makes me laugh. Professors get paid pennies compared to a public school teacher. Private school teachers have it even worse. Of course public school teachers and public education still needs vast improvement, but I’m fortunate to be teaching at a school that values me and pays me decently.

This reminds me of my favorite college professor, who also worked at a nearby grocery store to supplement her income. As a professor. At a state university. I remember her saying that she loved teaching so much that she didn't want to find a better-paying job.

Capitalism preys on passion. Any field that's desirable to work in for moral or fulfilling reasons is ripe for exploitation. It's disgusting how under valued teachers are in the country, at all levels

Thank you for highlighting this train wreck - and from personal experience in Asia, it’s worldwide, not just a US problem. All of this holds true for us, too.

As a college 'lecturer' who is thinking about quitting, this really hit hard. The worst part, I teach at the same school I got my BA so I get to constantly hear about how much they appreciate their alumni. I have students that graduated last year that now work in admin making much more than me... Is UKposts looking for more professors?

Thank you for talking about this. My history professor lost her best friend due to this system. Tenure was literally the difference between life and death. Since she was adjunct, she was ineligible for a lot of the healthcare benefits that would be guaranteed to tenured professors. Combine that with living paycheck to paycheck and it was impossible for her to recover. 😢 The business model of education needs to end. So many smart people are being screwed over by it and we’re losing valuable knowledge for the next generation.

Two quick thoughts: 1. As a longtime (9 brutal years) adjunct, I felt this video in my soul. I’m outrageously fortunate to have found my way into a FT faculty role, but I could just as easily still be on that hamster wheel. The job market is nothing but dumb luck and I hate it. 2. John Warner tries to address the “public good” point you’re making in his book Sustainable, Resilient, Free. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s a great read!

Now I understand why so many of my instructors look stressed out and depressed. Thank you for bringing this issue to light. Our entire economic system is designed to scrape money from the poor and middle class and deliver it to the top, so of course education wouldn’t be spared.

Thanks for this. I'm on a short-term academic contract at a university which has the highest ratio of these contracts to permanent positions in the country. To be honest, it kind of suits me as I'm not too bothered about staying in academia and my lucky low teaching load has given my space to do other stuff like UKposts. But generally the insecurity, high workloads, and low pay are just ridiculous. For many of my colleagues, especially immigrants, not having the guarantee can be hugely stressful and precarious. It is a clear cut case of exploitation - not that PhDs 'deserve' jobs more than anyone else, but it is a sobering thought to realise that even the highest level of qualification won't get you security in our purported meritocracy. No wonder the whole sector, including me, have been on strike for weeks in the UK. Anyway, stream of consciousness over. Great video as always, Zoe.

my community college loves to brag about how they have professors from the pretty prestigeous university nearby, but learning about this makes it seem less cool and more depressing lmao

The community college where I grew up, that I went to, BRAGGED about how almost all of their teachers were Adjuncts using the "they have other jobs in their field!" meaning that they'd be great teachers. And lot of my teachers were great, they cared a LOT. My creative writing professor really helped me grow and ended up helping me after I was harassed. My German professor was a great teacher and really kind. ETC! And now i'm extra mad how exploited they were. I knew things weren't good but I had no idea they were this bad. Fuck profit motive. Fuck corps

So, my mom recently retired from her tenured position at a public state university, and in some ways it goes even deeper. Like, things are bad enough for tenured professors. She worked 80-100 hour weeks _constantly._ The sheer amount of work is ridiculous even for tenured professors, even when you love the work itself. Then, it's even worse for adjuncts, and the adjuncts not only get paid worse, they also lose out on all the benefits that make the workload-to-pay ratio of tenured faculty sorta potentially worth it, like total job security. But the reason the university is being run in such a slapdash, cost-slashing way was because the state was constantly slashing its funding and making ridiculous demands -- as you alluded to at the end there. The administration is actually _pushing back_ against the state, and has been remarkably effective at doing so compared to administrations elsewhere in the state from what I hear, but the state is creating an enormous amount of unnecessary bloat, and funding is still going down. It's a small-ish school in a very red state in the midwest, so you kinda expect right-wing reactionary sabotage, but the deeper you look, the worse it gets, and it just doesn't stop.

When I was attending community college, I quickly learned to avoid any class taught by “TBA”

I've been an English adjunct professor at a community college for about 9 years, and after recently being screwed over by my school, I've decided it's time for me to move on to something else. That part where you talked about how heartbreaking it is really hit me hard; I teared up for a second because it hurts so much. This is what I wanted to do, this is what I went to school for six years to do. I love teaching and I love helping students, but after working so hard for so long, only to be continually slapped down and punished for my efforts, it's impossible not to feel burnt out and depressed. I can't keep living this way, and it's so unfair. I don't even want a big salary, I just want to be able to teach and live a decent life with some measure of stability and security. And I don't even have a family, I can't imagine how anyone could do this if they have kids. It sucks and it pisses me off. Thank you so much for doing this video, it's not a subject I see many people talk about.

3 of my grand parents were teachers, and I will never forget what my paternal grandfather once told me about education (he was a Physics and Chemistry university teacher): "you cant put a fair price on education or treat it like a business, if you make people pay what it is actually worth it, nobody will be able to pay for it, the government should subsidize it because whatever they think they are losing will be recouped with the labor from the people they taught since they will be solving your problems down the road" sorry about the english quality, not a native speaker and not from the US either.

Something that was not mentioned in this video is the shift to online classes in the post-covid era and how that affects adjuncts. I am in my fourth semester teaching at two colleges (one as an adjunct, one as a temporary full-time instructor). The community college I teach at still offers primarily online classes not because they are being cautious due to Covid, but because that's what most of the students want. In person classes barely run sometimes but online ones fill up fast. Since the full-time tenure track faculty get to choose their classes first, there are typically 0 online classes remaining for any adjunct instructors (at least in my department). All classes are paid the same on a per credit hour basis, but online courses take less work once you've set them up the first time. There are full time instructors at my college teaching 8-10 classes all online with basically everything auto-grading itself, some of them now living in completely different states than where the college is located. Many of the adjuncts would love the chance to teach just one or two online classes to lighten their load as they teach at multiple institutions, but typically they have no choice because there is nothing left to choose from.

I and a lot of others I know have held grudges against teachers throughout our education due to them getting in grades late, being unable to help or explain why we were doing these assignments, and overall never showing enough interest in getting to know us. Now I realize that we had no idea what position they were in. They could have kids to cook dinner for, on top of grading and planning each assignment. They could be restricted to one syllabus. They could walk in every day knowing that they might not see us the next semester. I also talked to some of my current teachers and found out that due to the janitor shortage, they have to CLEAN their own rooms, on TOP of everything else they do! So thanks for spreading some awareness on this, Zoe- from a judgy high-schooler.

I have been on this soap box for over 10 years now and I'll not stop. I was a poor student and not a teacher, but as you say this affects all of us. When the public decides to elect a fraud as a joke or for random change, or storm the Capitol, we know our education system needs a serious second glance because that means we've been failing for a loooong time already, and all over the place not just a few bad areas. This is really friggan important, thanks for making this video.

So I'm not sure if anyone wants my opinion, but my Dad just retired from being a college professor at a community college. He was a full professor, and was replaced by an adjunct for most of his classes. I also spent time as a student at that college, and, given that my father's colleagues were almost all adjuncts, I got taken to work a couple times a year, and my father spends a good amount of time outside of work hanging with work pals, I've interacted with a lot of adjunct professors. Here are my observations: 1) The Unions for College professors suck. They are completely caught up in politics, whether that be office politics or social politics, and neglect the actual material needs of professors, both tenured/tenure track and adjunct professors. This has resulted in a pretty steady decline in real wages for all college professions everywhere. Both my father, my great-uncle, and my godfather all attested to this. If the unions improved, so would working conditions, but the professors most likely to be involved in mass organization tend to be concerned about office and social politics, not wages and benefits. The Unions need to improve. God knows how that's going to happen, though. 2) Colleges in general seem to have a variety of internal cultures, none of which support adjuncts. In community colleges, it's an inferiority complex. I knew all kinds of wonderful professors whose work could have been the "hook" to bring in a wider variety of students beyond the normal mish-mash of people with low high school grades or low personal wealth. Many of my community college classes were as good or better than classes I later took at 4-year state schools, and many of the permanent faculty were actually doing pretty worthwhile research as well, but the community college never mentioned such things in their advertising, nor did they attempt to bring such activities to the fore in any other way. Since the college was almost entirely tuition-funded, this meant that the college was always short of students and funds, and thus brought in more and more adjuncts. The state-schools I went to were different; they were entirely donor-focused. If colleges are run like a business, for many colleges that business is a hedge fund. In order to bring more donors, the focus of the college was more buildings and more sports. Sports buildings were especially important. On year, the basketball coach was the highest-paid in the NCAA; his wages would have been enough to hire 20 $80,000 a year permanent professors. Those 20 potential permanent positions are filled by adjuncts. My exposure to private and research colleges is more limited, but from what I've gotten from by great-uncle and godfather suggests a massive superiority complex. The professors and encouraged to considers themselves too elite to teach many classes; teaching more than the minimum required has been reported to me as being considered weird and distasteful. Thus, adjuncts must be brought in to do the actually teaching.

The moment at about 24:50 is one of the absolute saddest things I’ve ever seen. You’re seeing someone who was born to teach reflecting on the fact that she wasn’t allowed to by a money-hungry, broken system. Fucking broke my heart too.

Some additional notes: 1. We are often asked about our availability months in advance. We are then given a possible schedule. The classes on that schedule may change at any moment before the start of class. Also, those classes can be canceled any time before the start of class due to many reasons. Or those classes may be given to a full time faculty member that had one of their classes canceled and needs to pick up an extra class. So our schedules may change with little notice and we may not know if we have enough work until it is too late. 2. Class size can alter our pay. If you are teaching a class with low enrollment (often times 5 students or less), some schools will lower your pay. One school that I taught at would lower the pay by $500 per student under a specific number. So if you taught a class with 3 students and you need to have 5, you would be deducted $1000 from your contract. That would mean that if you are earning $2,500 per class, it would then be down to $1,500 for a 15 week class. The school states that this is due to the fact that you will have less grading, but they do not give you extra money if you are teaching a class where they put in extra students. The rate for teaching 5 students to 30 students is all the same pay. Obviously, there is a lot more grading with 30 students than with 5 students, but the pay is the same. 3. We are often limited as to how many classes we are allowed to teach at any given school since they do not want us to to be full time and get benefits. Usually, the cap is about 2 classes per semester per school (at least around here). That would mean working at 2 schools is still considered part time (money wise, not time wise). 3 schools would be almost full time (with very little free time). 4. Grading. Full time faculty at bigger schools will often times have grad students that grade their papers. If you are an adjunct, you will not have someone else grading for you. You may have a class where you use a computer program for the students to use for their homework. Those computer programs are great, but not all students will use them and you will have to monitor the grades on the computer programs. Also, some of the students will stop going to class when you have those computer programs since they think that they can learn more from the computer program (which can lower your reputation). 5. Handling all of the emails, computer systems, homework systems, school policies, etc between multiple schools is tedious and stressful. For every school you teach at, your email and computer work drastically increases. Sometimes we will have an orientation (not paid) and sometimes we just receive our contract, email/password, copy card, and syllabus. 6. Parking. If you are going to multiple schools, you will have to deal with all of those parking lots. Sometimes you are going to a school in the middle of the day and you find a full parking lot. You then get to circle the lot looking for a space of have to park in a lot that is very far away. Also, you if each school has a different parking pass, you will need to double check that the correct pass is hanging up. This may not be that big of a deal, but when you are on a time crunch (since you work at multiple schools), any delay is annoying. 7. No raises. When I fist started at the one school, there was mention that after a few years your pay would be increased. When 2020 happened, some schools froze the raises (so our pay is still the same). 8. If we are teaching during the day, it is difficult to find another regular job to supplement our pay. It is often easier to have the regular job first, then teach as an adjunct at night. The availability of night classes varies from school to school.

My mom worked in registration at our local community college and one of her friends taught an adjunct class for a semester. He made $900 for the class. It was in 2005 so things were priced differently but that's still a crazy low wage. He was only doing that one evening class and he had a regular day job but he never went back to teaching which is a real shame because from what I heard he was a great teacher. I hate to think about how many great teachers we've lost over the years because they couldn't afford to continue teaching at adjunct wages.

Seriously advocate for workers unions. I know that is easier said than done however. I worked as a staff member at a local community college as faculty support. It was very clear to me managing class schedules and helping faculty that almost all of them are Adjunct. I didn't understand for a while what an adjunct was, I eventually became really good friends with one of them and they explained it to me. It was clear that though they had a bachelors, though they were smarter and decades older than me. They were in the same economic state as me, I left that job shortly after.

Capitalism. The problem is capitalism. As long as education functions as a business, it will only continue to get worse.

I met an adjunct professor who had taught at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. She was cutting my hair at great clips. It was the best haircut I've ever had!

In The Adjunct Underclass, the best "joke" I remember involved an Adjunct Professor who was so well-regarded by her department, her department chair actually took the unprecedented step of inviting an Adjunct to serve on a hiring "committee" to search for a full-time tenure-track professor as soon as there was an opening in the department.....

I'm a biology professor, and 100% agree with everything Zoe covered here. In addition, there's an additional factor facing academics in STEM: research and professional expectations. Tenure-track and full-time faculty (at research universities) are expected to continue their research, publish regularly, participate actively in professional organizations, serve as a peer-reviewer for academic journals, and advise a cadre of graduate students. _None_ of these additional tasks are compensated, simply expected. It used to be that these types of tasks were part of being a tenured professor, as tenured professors usually have a lighter teaching load than the rest of us. However, increasingly, these additional activities are being expected not only at research institutions, but at smaller liberal arts schools. I remember when I was doing yet another job search a few years ago that I saw a posting for a full-time non-tenure position at a smaller college that was looking for someone to not only teach a 7/5(ish) load, but also establish and run a research lab group, publish regularly, manage the school's botanical specimen collection, and mentor undergraduate research. These small liberal arts schools used to simply have major teaching responsibilities, sometimes with the addition of managing undergraduate researchers. Instead, these schools are increasingly adding research and professional responsibilities _on top of_ their already strenuous teaching load. It's ridiculous. When I finished my PhD, I knew I wanted to focus on teaching and mentoring undergrads, rather than research. As such, I've spent more than a decade now wandering through the non-tenure-track academic world. I'm financially okay, but only because I'm single and don't have children. I would never be able to afford a family on my annual income, so it's good I never wanted children. I ended up living in an area with multiple universities and colleges because I usually am teaching at 2-4 of them in any given semester. I've got a lead on a full-time position at a smaller college that I think I might be able to get, and it seems perfect for me, but the competition's going to be fierce. The days of academia being a safe and comfortable career are largely over. Schools simply replace retired tenured professors with adjuncts or graduate students. (And don't get me started on how graduate workers are exploited by the university system!) I just want to teach! I want to work with young people interested in STEM and help them chart their path! Instead, I live on the margins of academia. I don't regret my path, but it's not one I can reasonably recommend to most people unless they have an almost obsessive love for their field.

Do it. Destroy the [college] education system with facts and logic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd watch that on repeat while attempting to navigate the education system.

Before I moved on to 4 year schools I took one class at a community college. I was really upset with how unhelpful and how unresponsive my professor was. She probably acted that way because what other option did she have to make ends meet. Thank you for this video. This was very enlightening

The bit about schools encouraging teachers to put in as little effort as possible felt apt, cause I remember that's exactly how I felt as a student back in high-school. Spent years basically being trained to get the best results for the least amount of effort, and now I'm spending even longer trying to break the cycle and get out of that mindset.

Honestly this explains so much why the people who actually taught us were not great at their jobs. They weren't given any other way to teach it. It's also so obnoxious because I feel like the contingent faculty are the people who actually cared about my education and the tenured professors were only there for a paycheck. But it's interesting how this career also trends with all other professions where gig work and contract work are taking over actual employees. It's tragic. I would also love more videos on higher ed. I was required to do some research on it a couple years ago in my undergrad and it's so sad. Money is concentrated at the top. Problem of everything.

Having a couple friends that are struggling to get into teaching college and able to afford things, yeah, this is closer to what I figured. Teaching really has no right to be such a crapshoot, whether college or otherwise.

A close friend of mine is an adjunct professor who has to work a second job at Starbucks to make rent and have healthcare--this was already infuriating, but it hits differently now that I'm going to grad school myself. In my first year, I'll pay in tuition about what my yearly salary at my old job was. That times all the students in my program, which is one of the smaller programs at the university. They could afford to pay the professors. They're CHOOSING not to.

We have a similar situation in the UK. It was so noticeable at my university how stressed and underappreciate the postdocs were. Talk about discouraging. It is beyond stupid to treat educators like this if we want to keep human society perpetuating itself.

I was hoping you would mention here the situation at Hamline, where an unaccountable administrator was able to get an adjunct fired on false, literally counter-factual, pretenses with the full support of the rest of the administration whereas the adjunct was assumed to be in the wrong from the outset simply because they were an adjunct.

The emotion at 25:00 just kills me. As someone who recently started working as a high school teacher, so many of the issues about systems incentivizing poor education range painfully true. It's heart wrenching that the thing I love most in the world, teaching, is so broken and depersonalized by the institution of school

I put all my eggs in the academia basket through undergrad but I realized all of this halfway through my MS before I applied for my PhD. I studied environmental science but ended up learning to code and becoming a software engineer. No regrets whatsoever. The only way this will get better is if educators start demanding better of themselves... by leaving.

Thank you for this. I had taken a logic class from a very talented adjunct professor. He had to leave teaching because it was not supporting him financially. We need to invest in education. Equitable pay for all faculty is an investment in our society.

I'm currently working for minimum wage as a remote teaching assistant in a role that required post-graduate education and advanced social and technical skills to qualify. This is the same I made working in hospitality jobs requiring no education or experience. Based on salaries for TA's I'd seen online I thought they were grossly undervaluing us... even in the understanding that teachers are underpaid. But I guess we're to be punished for not going into business or politics for the rest of our lives. Edited to add: I once was denied food stamps because I was a student. They said if you can afford to go to college, you can afford food. No matter that you're taking out loans, grants and scholarships to go to school. So you finish school in debt and poverty and... get to carry on with the same.

A system of capital, which predisposes itself to as much market individualization as possible, is antithetical to the concept of a cross-disciplinary education, and allows the justification of underpaying professors for the fact that they only teach a single subject !! Big problem!!

I was contingent faculty for a while. I loved my first term, but burned out super fast. I have felt so guilty about it all this time, like I should have been stronger and better, and found a way to continue teaching and loving teaching. Thank you for opening my eyes to how unfairly the college treated me, and the extent to which my passion and hard-earned knowledge were being exploited. Clearly this does need to be talked about more openly. It's heartbreaking, and it's frightening for our society's future.

I thought this was a really great video. As a student, though, whenever I hear information like this, I sometimes don't know what to do with it. I totally understand that many of my teachers are getting underpaid and/or overworked, yet I often can't help myself from asking them for help outside of class; from reaching out with questions or comments; or, to an extent, from trying to connect with them. Equally often, I find myself feel really bad about doing such. I know that times are tough, and I by no means want to heft on to their existing baggage, but I struggle to just stand idly by. As a neurodivergent student, the structure of the classroom frequently poses major challenges to me. Simultaneously, however, the prospect of asking for assistance arises within me a strong sense of guilt. I want, desperately, to connect with many of my teachers -- even the "bad" ones -- and as it currently stands, what I've been telling myself is that I want to become a teacher down the line. When I hold this information, though, when my gaze starts wandering and I find myself looking it in the eyes, it gives me the sense that my impulses are going inevitably become harmful -- to myself or others. And that's not something I would ever want. I understand that it's a systemic issue, but it's never the systems you have to come face-to-face with, it's the struggling individuals. I don't know, maybe, what I'm trying to say here. I wish things were better, for everyone. A good teacher is such a valuable role to have in a student's life. I wish more teachers got the chance to be as good as they could be. I just don't want to be put (or by my own hands placed) in the position to make those odds worse. I'm a student who needs help, who wishes they could help, but who feels that, to the extent which I can, it might be harmful to do so. And maybe that's selfish or misguided of me, but it's where I'm at: feeling lonely in a system designed to do so.

I had a friend that had dreamed of working as a professor, ever since she was in high school. She was hardworking, intelligent, and communicative, graduating from her PhD early. Unfortunately she had to take on two adjunct professorships to make ends meet out of her first year, and between the lack of support, unmanageable class sizes, and forced overwork, she burned out pretty hard. She's working at a better job now, but she would have been a great instructor. Thanks for the video, was nice understanding what exactly the incentives are for colleges that perpetuate this problem.

As a current adjunct, this video PISSED ME OFF. Because it's SO TRUE!!!! LOL. Anyway, I think a crucial part of changing this situation would have to be higher Ed workers uniting through labor struggles, such as unionizing, labor actions, strikes, and fuck it, SEIZING THOSE MEANS OF INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION. Anyone who hasn't heard of it should look up the recent University of California graduate strike. They won some improvements in compensation.

As a former academic (did the PhD and the postdoc) I strongly encourage you to do more videos talking about the rot that is at the core of academia. It's driven by money and exploitation of labor at every level.

After attending college for years I've noticed that tenured professors, in my experience, are usually the worst professors. I've had professors openly tell the class they don't care anymore because it's not like they can be fired. last semester one of em didn't start grading anything till the week before finals. And only then because the final consisted of reworking a paper based on feedback. Non tenured professors are still actually trying to do a good job. It's almost like giving people lifetime appointments it's nearly impossible to dislodge them from makes people care less and be more likely to be openly terrible. I also had amazing teachers in CC but every semester in university I get at least one professor so bad everyone in the class starts e-mailing dept heads.....

Man, our whole collegiate system sure is a Birch, huh? If only our higher education system's fundamental structure was as non-toxic as those mattresses! In all seriousness, an incredible video as always, Zoe. Only you could make a half hour fly by so quickly while talking about the injustices in our higher education system

Zoe, I truly feel your pain! I've worked for 11+ years now to complete a PhD in Sociology because I've increasingly been plagued by medical problems, but still wanted to find a way of making best use of what I saw as my best talent: my ability to communicate. I once wanted to teach at the university level, but I soon came to realize the truth of what you're saying about the commodification of education. As a Graduate Assistant, I came to the conclusion that after 20 years in the US Air Force, another 45 months working as the Emergency Services Director of a large chapter of the American Red Cross in Central Texas, and a few years working as a GA, I had never had an experience as soul crushing as grading undergrad papers. That's when I really started to wonder if academe was the right place for me. But I'd like to offer you a little ray of hope in the darkness. I took a Master of Science degree in Studies of the Future at University of Houston - Clear Lake, graduating in 2005. Shortly after that, the program moved to University of Houston's Main Campus, where it now resides in the College of Technology, led by Dr. Andy Hines. Andy has been working with post-Capitalist futures for some time, and he can undoubtedly talk about futures of work once we get beyond capitalism. Moreover, he can likely suggest some things people can do now to create futures in which highly educated people like you can share their passion for helping people learn AND be able to live comfortably -- without having to work 72 hours per day and sleep for 20 minutes on weekends. If you'd like to learn more about the futures of work -- in this case, focusing on the futures of the profession of teaching --and how those futures may be different once we move beyond capitalism, look Andy up. If you'd like an introduction, I'll be glad to send him a link to this video and ask him to get in touch with you. But here's a note I'd like everyone to consider. Right now, we're creating futures that other people will live in. There's a classic rock album I listen to Friday nights: To Our Children's Children's Children. It's those children who'll live out the futures we're creating. It's those people we need to think about now. How would you like them to remember you by the futures you left them? That's where the conversation starts. Let's talk!

I too am a former adjunct professor (ESL was my speciality) who left higher education for all the reasons you’ve outlined. Every minute of this video resonated with me. I too was broken-hearted to find myself forced out of the profession I spent years training to enter, a profession I loved and found fulfillment in. Thank you for making this video. Adjunct solidarity! ✊

As some one who was an adjunct professor for 3.5 years, I can attest. It tore my heart right out.

The demeanor of everyone who wasn't an industry professional at my community college makes a lot more sense now.

Last year was my girlfriend's first year as an adjunct professor, and I have had the hardest time understanding the schools' compensation structures. This helped me understand it more holistically, so thank you, again, for making these absurdly valuable videos.

This breaks my heart. I loved teaching and was thankfully at least at an institution where I was given a lot of freedom to teach how I wanted so I put a lot of passion into my classes and students. Lasted 4.5 years before I had to leave teaching due to burnout from a similar situation and wanting to have time to actually work in my field again (where I would also be paid much better). My former students still reach out and are always so sad to hear that I left, but I just couldn't keep the pace anymore and wasn't willing to become one like some of the other instructors who just did the bare minimum because they had learned that's what they had to do to stay sane (not that I can blame them). And the worst part is like you said - in the end it's the students who lose out.

Hi Zoe, I want to thank you so much for you're video! I was an adjunct professor for three years before I moved on to currently working on a PhD in sociology. Let me tell you, like you and many others, having to work more than one school was tough! Especially trying to schedule things around so you have enough time to drive to each school. I worked in a private university and I was shocked that all adjuncts get $2100 per course and only allowed 2 courses per semester! I stood there for 3 years because many of my students were Latino like myself and we're amazed to actually see someone of our community actually teaching a college course. I was the only Latino in the social science department and one of only very few people of color who was teaching there. The two community colleges I work that or actually a much better experience and paid me fairly because we had a union. But as you described in the video it was hard making poverty-level wages and still trying to survive let alone take care of yourself. Even as I work on my PhD at a state school I'm so shocked and surprised that my professors who are full-time and tenure are making six figures or have now started to make six figures. Higher ed needs major reforms and we really need to start investing in public education.

i'm on college right now with the hope of teaching in higher education.... this video is killing me.

This was a really strong video to open 2023 on, and an extremely important one too. When I graduated from college I eventually found work doing media production adjacent work at several startups and felt fortunate enough to make what I considered a fine wage (that has since deflated greatly thanks to the strength of the doctor and a lack of getting raises). My partner and I both wanted to transition into education in the future, with my intention being to seek out work teaching media production skills at a high school or college level but... Yeah... financially I just can't look at that as a sound decision. Which is a shame too because I think the work has the potential to be extremely fulfilling for me and provide me with a sense of purpose I simply don't get now but... Bills don't care about how much you like your job... Edit: I also really related to the part where you talked about adjuncts taking the, and let's not mince words, labor abuse from colleges that they take so that they could hopefully "earn" a regular position. That basically described several jobs I had as a freelancer or "contractor" where I did everything that employees did (including going on work trips, attending meetings, and having standard days at an offfice) for an hourly rate without benefits.

Sad painful and true. I am a contingent faculty for many years. 100 percent true. Eventually, I left teaching in higher education. I am happier now.

Excellent video on higher education, and very eye opening. I was going to apply for a PHD program next year, but I'm turned off by the treatment of teachers and professors. Plus, there'd be no guarantee I'd get a full time position. Unfortunately, I have to give up my dream of being a university professor for now because it isn't conducive to a sustainable career or life. We're better off teaching K-12.

This was a great video. I also wanted to add that it gets even more complicated when you add research to the mix. Because at least in my country, all these adjunct positions are for teaching AND research, so the university expects you to still be putting out papers, while neither paying you properly nor giving you the time to, y'know, actually do any science. And then you go to apply for permanent positions, and they actually just don't care about how good of a teacher you are, all they look at is your research output. So if you want to get into academia, these positions can really become dead ends, ensuring that you are neither a good teacher to your students nor a productive researcher

I'm not watching this yet because I know it'll made me sad as an aspiring academic (currently a grad student) but I definitely will when I'm ready

Watching this made me realize my history professor that I had for a semester at my local community college was probably an adjunct. I was a pretty bad student (the final essay I did probably wouldn't have flown in a high school setting it was so bad) but I liked the guy. He was interesting to talk to and seemed to really care about history and teaching. I think he ended up leaving that semester since I never saw him in a classroom again. Only here and there on campus.

I can absolutely attest to this. I calculated my wages per hour the last time I taught in 2021, and I would have made more at the local McDonalds. I enjoy teaching, but I couldn't justify the time away from my family to do it.

As someone who was always mesmerized by academia and was fully planning on getting a Ph.D, learning more and more about the job market as far as the amount of available tenure track positions and high probability of being an adjunct for several years after grad school made me switch to going for a master's for now and maybe down the road I would consider getting a Ph.D. but only if the current system is fixed. All this to say, I'm glad more people are bringing up these issues since they are almost never talked about in discussions of grad school with the universities, at least in the US.

I think videos like this are really valuable. The exploitation of adjuncts is a huge problem, not only for the reasons mentioned in the video but also. The video focused, rightly so, on the educational problems this gig University economy creates, but there is ofc also a huge epistemic cost to it as well. Not only do students run the risk of learning less, which means that the next Generation is less well equipped to do literally anything more advanced or complex, but also many academics and scientists in their best years, when they combine knowledge with, lets call it "youthful creativity", when they are most likely to come up with some of their best ideas or challenge old ideas, are destroyed in favour of capital. Not only can you not be a good educator under such conditions, you cannot be a good scientist, philosopher, mathematician or artist either. And the world, our knowledge, our societies are worse for it.

When I was in undergrad I had a professor who used their last lecture to criticize the adjunct system. 10 years later, still remember that. I was an adjunct at my uni last semester and.....nothings changed :o (I didn't do it again, because the pay wasn't worth the work, and I got my own academic stuff to do)

What hit me particularly hard was hearing you mention students who ask what you're teaching next year so they can take another class with you. I HATE having to tell my students "I don't know if my contract will be renewed, but keep your fingers crossed and look for me on the course catalog." I've done as much as I can in my classes this semester to try and open up the black box of how teaching in higher ed works, so hopefully my reasoning/decisions are less of a mystery to my students. We collaboratively designed our course during the first week, and I'm really transparent about what I'm required to include, the limitations we need to work within, and the few spots where we have some wiggle room to decide on our own. It's too early to see if that shared understanding will make a difference this semester, but it's worth a shot.

Don't forget to say a huge downside of the business model of higher education is that students think they are paying for the product, they pay and go, (like a movie ticket) and they should have an A. I grade harshly on citations and references, knowing that I give students as many resubmissions as they need to understand the skill (more work for me, but better for my mental health--since I feel free to give them the grade that they earn). But some of them are livid with me for not giving them the A. I don't understand how we have come to a place that students believe they should get college credit for paying the tuition, instead being there to learn new things and benefit from the experience.

I adjuncted for 10 years. Will never go back to it. Thanks for making this video!

Thanks for this. High school teacher by day, online adjunt by evening (for a community college of course!), and speech coach by weekend here.

You and acollierastro have really opened my eyes to this and changed my perspective of assuming every professor is a hoity-toity type, it's crazy the sheer percentage that are not thought of as permanent faculty!

Comment affirming that I would like to see you tear apart the college system with facts and logic. I'm finishing my 2-year degree at a community college, and have very mixed feelings about it. I'm grateful for the opportunity, and the individual faculty and staff seemed to be well-meaning people, but... It has the same contingent faculty problem. Some of my courses were "taught" wholly online through essentially copy/pasted web tutorials -- something I would not have otherwise paid hundreds of dollars per course for, but I need the gosh darn degree unless I want to make sandwiches for soccer parents the rest of my life. I have a 4.0 and I do not feel as though I really earned it. I am older and not unusually intelligent. These classes in particular felt phoned in. The ones from full-time faculty were more challenging, and for those at least, I felt like I earned my grade. I am completely certain this discrepancy is not a problem with the teachers but with the structure they're teaching in (capitalist hellscape). I was also fortunate to work as a student assistant to help offset my tuition costs (whole different ball of wax there, possible topic for the series), and in that work I was able to peek a little deeper inside the system than most students would be able to, but still be removed enough from it as to have a critical eye. I agree that this extends from, and extends to, broader trends in the modern socio-economy. As an English teacher, you're uniquely positioned to write excellent videos on this topic, and I think if you can, you should.

We have a very similar system here in Brazil. Online education is part of this equation too, because it's easier to make precarious. I know many people with PhDs that are unemployed. Thank you so much for talking about this topic with your sensible heart, Zoe.

Thanks for this video. I'm a former adjunct and I have many friends who live the adjunct lifestyle in NYC. Many of the points you made are doubly true in a city with a high cost of living like New York. I'd like to paint a picture of the average 'full time' adjunct here: - Lives with 2-3 roommates (at least). - Has a substantial student debt burden of their own. - Works more than 40 hours a week. May have a side hustle. - May or may not have health insurance. Sometimes the cost just feels too high and it's easier not to think about it. - Teaches at 3 or even 4 institutions at the same time. This makes it even harder to get to know your students/coworkers or form a community. - Starts out excited, but will likely burn out after 3 or 4 years. Luckily for the schools, there is always a new crop of fresh-faced grad students to fill the vacancy. I'm not trying to write a sob story. Obviously this situation is common for many people who live in cities and work in the service industry or gig economy, and it is bad in every case. We survive. However, what makes it feel particularly insane in the case of adjunct professors is that students are paying such comically absurd amounts of money to these institutions. In return, they get to learn from people who are burnt-out, stretched thin, and don't have the resources to put passion into their teaching. Community colleges may be the worst, but this also happens at well-known and expensive institutions like NYU, Pratt, SVA, and the New School. When you look at the big picture it starts to feel unsustainable.

My parents were both profs, coming up in the older generation where it was a permanent dream job. And they are both livid at how new professors and students are getting screwed by this system. Also at ballooning admin costs, for a group of people who have no understanding or appreciation of the role of a university. As one example, a new clinical research lab that they'd been trying to get set up for years got turned into a VP's office wing. He already had an office wing, but he didn't like the vibe. So he got to take over the lab space instead (he liked that vibe), because admin comes first, always. No, they didn't get to set up the lab elsewhere, it was just gone. I also have close friends who are now looking for new careers, after the school was able to demote them to Per Course Instructor, thereby paying them about 1/3 the rate for the same work. The whole thing is a huge mess, and is likely to crash and burn soon, which would be *checks notes* bad.

As someone who only has tenure-track professors, this explains a lot as to why many people report a university experience so much worse than mine. I was lucky in my country to have the chance to go to such a university without needing to be rich.

Current adjunct here! There is an end to this cycle, but it's a grim one: higher education is on its way to collapse. I've been more open about the adjunct situation with my students the last year or so, and aside from their shock at how low my pay is, a consistent response has been "wait, where is my tuition money going if its not to support the people teaching me and my education?" Students are seeing more and more that the cost of an undergraduate degree isn't matching its value, and they aren't enrolling. At (one of) my universities, we're projecting a ~15% drop in student enrollment over the last few years (starting before the pandemic). It hasn't reached a fevered pitch quite yet, but they're in the beginning of a budget crisis. So far, their grand plan to address the problem has been to start pushing for even higher teaching loads and cutting / consolidating class sections to cut costs (i.e. paying teachers even less). Of course, that just means students get stuffed into classes that have way too many seats, where the already exhausted intructors are stretched even more thin, or they can't get classes they need and have to stay on for even more semesters to reach graduation. This leads to more and more adjuncts jumping ship, destabilizing the already broken system and making the student experience exponentially worse, while tuition keeps going up. It's a death spiral. Like you talked about, if the focus was on the broader good of public education we could fix the problem by doubling down on student learning and reducing their financial burden (cutting out the absurdly bloated administration costs), but universites are now strictly a business. The stake holders will cut and slash all the vital parts until there's nothing left and then jump ship to the next venture they can suck dry. The bigger universities will be able to ride things out on the back of their reputation and alumni networks, but expect to start seeing the small and medium universites dying away over the next decade.

24:52 This Hit me hard I'm not a teacher but I'm also a skilled professional, I'm a automotive technician. I loved working on machines growing up, and I like working with my hands, I like solving problems and figuring out how things go together and finding solutions, when I was in school getting certified I was excited to go out into the field and get to work on a bunch of different vehicles and get first-hand experience with a lot of the technology and tools of the trade... Instead I got 10 hour days, 6 day weeks, pressure to upsell, credit card debt from buy overpriced tools, ambivalent coworkers, uncaring management, and low pay that was eventually cut so that they can hire more people whose job it was for me to train. The industry has nearly ruined my love of cars, and killed any ambition I had to master my craft.

As someone who fits the "lawyer teaching law classes" bill, I wanted to chime in. I was an adjunct at a local undergraduate university teaching Legal Research for about 4 years. I enjoyed the teaching, but it felt like charity work, not a job. I'm fortunate that the extra income for the classes was nice, but not something that I relied upon to make ends meet. It became untenable as the number of students in the class rose and prep/grading time increased. It was forcing me to choose between doing a good job for my students and doing a good job for my clients, since I was taking time out of my legal practice to teach. I had to choose between the two, and one of them pays poverty wages. It's a no-brainer. I know lots of attorneys who get into adjunct teaching for a little supplemental income (student loans!), but most bail after a year or two because the return on your time is just orders of magnitude higher when spent on your legal practice. Law schools and undergraduate pre-law or paralegal programs are constantly scrounging for professors because they are asking otherwise very well-paid and overworked professionals to devote a bunch of time working for less than you get working at Five Guys.

When I was an undergrad I was seriously considering an academic career. My history lecturer warned me it was a scary, precarious existence and I should deeply consider my choice. I didn't end up in academia but seeing people I know fight tooth and nail for their careers and watching this makes me feel I really dodged a bullet.

I don't want to contribute to this system which is why I'd rather do other work, totally unrelated to my degree, than adjunct. This is also why I decided not to go on the tenure track job market. Not only are there no jobs, but I also don't want to be part of a system this broken and unethical (this last part related to the continued production of PhDs, especially in the humanities). Anyway, I wish more students and more parents knew the true state of higher ed right now.

I’m currently working towards a Master’s Degree at Southern New Hampshire University. During it, there was a lecture by a woman who did two different lectures on becoming a professor, which was a hope of mine going into the program. She told me flat out that I would likely be paid 400$ to teach a class for an entire semester, as an adjunct. I was also told by her that colleges likely will not hire you for 3 or more classes given they have to give you benefits if you do. In other words, the only contract I’d be likely to get would be 1-2 classes per semester, if like you said, the contract isn’t left to expire. I’m weighing my alternative career choices because I don’t feel confident I ever will get tenure. Thank you sincerely for bringing light to this.

My biggest problem with any of these discussions is that still, no one DOES anything about it. These are good and important subject matter, but the problem is that we all nod our heads and agree, then go back to doing things the same way, without any kind of critical thought into the fact that these kind of problems takes us to change. Activism takes action, not just agreeing with palatable takes.

As someone who grew up in a household supported primarily by my mother's pitiful salary as a Finance Lecturer in an Australian university, this hurt me to my core.

Thank you so much for this, I agree completely that this sucks. Thank you so much for the CTA at the end.

Thank you so much for this video. I’m a lecturer at a public university, and I’ve always worked in academia - even my very first job as a tutor and supplemental instructor came about when I was an undergraduate student in our public university system here in CA. All of my lecturer colleagues are Black women - like me - or women and people of color; on the other hand, there are no Black tenure track faculty in our department and only one woman of color. Many of us are also younger than the tenured faculty (I am 32). My colleagues and I regularly talk about how much time (often unpaid) that we put into developing our skills, revising our curriculum and updating our assignments, and how difficult this is to maintain because we have to teach so many classes to stay afloat financially. We all want our students to have the best versions of us, but holding ourselves to that standard while also facing such financial stress is so difficult. All of this is doubly challenging when we face systemic bias in our institutions on a regular basis. Honestly, without my family and the benefit of us having roots here in California, I wouldn’t be able to survive - not just financially, but emotionally, too. I love teaching with all my heart and come from a long line of teachers. At this rate, going into my sixth year as an adjunct, I don’t think that I can stay in the profession much longer. I hope that people outside of academia watch this video and understand that having a system like this stamps out voices that would enrich the educational system of this country in so many ways. If more of us are honest about what we face in academia, I think it will help, even just a little, to inspire an energy of change… I don’t know, maybe I am being desperately hopeful at this point. I don’t know.

This is a lot of why I decided to not stay in academia. My adjuncts were overworked, underpaid, and stressed. Conditions aren't the best in my current industry (I'm actually making a video about that right now), but it's a little better. It's still mostly freelance work, though, and I was nodding along with most of your points about adjuncts.

I couldn't get enough to make rent and to eat when I was an adjunct. I was lucky, my parents could help, and I'd found multiple housemates to make things easier

Seeing one of my workshop instructors in a graduate Ivy League program need to work at 3 schools while living in her car is what convinced me I'll never go into teaching

Thank you for making this - I needed a reminder that my employment situation is not unique and its not my fault that I have to take on a bunch of different gigs. I feel sad for the world but relieved for myself in a way. You have brought me peace of mind today - thank you

The best professors i’ve had have all been non tenured. In fact the absolut best learning experience i’ve had has been with a fairly young adjunct that also had further edjucation in teaching. I have never learned more in a class or felt more motivated. The weekly tasks were varied, he asked for feedback especially on the texts he’d give is to read, if anything he gave us took to long to read etc. It was amazing. What saddens me is that he probably didn’t make that much money teaching us despite me not studying in the states but in europe.

This is coming from a current student perspective, but if you get to know your professors at all then you'll hear the horror stories around this. I've known many talented, dedicated, passionate educators who get treated like absolute dirt by their college; eeking out a living by the skin of their teeth out of sheer love for their subject. I'm also really concerned about how this affects the future of educators like. I would happily consider getting into teaching if I could live a modest life off of it, but things seem so dire that I have written that off as a job possibility entirely. So what happens in another 20+ years when all the remaining tenure professors retire and there's a lack of fresh blood across the field? I'm not trying to spell doom or anything, but the whole university system is slowly flushing itself down the drain (with the help of state/govt bodies that refuse to fund them of course).

Zach Star (A math channel) has a video where he illustrates how parents who were late to pick up their kids from school, began being fined when late by whatever rate per amount of time. Anyways they found that the parents ended up being late more often, because the fine turned the lateness from a disrespect to the faculty's time, to a mere transaction for them. When I first came across your channel through your grades are bullshit video, I thought of that Zach Star video, and thought it'd be interesting for you to check it out, if you haven't already.

My mom was an adjunct professor at one point, she even said that she gave all her students A's because she couldn't spend all that time grading papers when she was still trying to get her degree. And this was when rent didn't require you to make a certain amount over the monthly rent, and you could have enough money to just pay rent even if you had to have little food to afford it.

I used to work in VFX, a line of work that is truly chaotic. All the work is project based, so you go from one movie to another and then to another (theoretically). If everything is working fine and the studio is getting consistent projects there's no gap in work. At the smaller studios, like the one in my hometown, I'd have work one week and no work the next, once going 10 months in between jobs. It's horrible to not really know when your next job will be or how long your current one will last. I was so broken by this system that when I moved on to my current job (a CAD drafter) I was flummoxed when my boss gave me a due date of "next year". He was confused by my reaction so I had to explain to him that I had been conditioned that I wouldn't have a job next week, let alone NEXT YEAR. He laughed and said that where we are, there's enough work that I can work here until I die. It was really sweet :D All that to say, a lack of job security can absolutely destroy your mental health and lead to some extremely short-term thinking.