The Atlantic
September 24, 2015
Data on the salaries of college faculty and administrators is scattered and incomplete, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. Still, it’s possible to get a rough sense of how they compare—an important indication of a given higher-education institution’s fiscal priorities. According to a recent analysis by the Chronicle, the median salary for public-college presidents rose 7 percent between the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years, to $428,000.
Data on adjunct pay is notoriously hard to track down. Because adjuncts tend to supplement their teaching income with other jobs, sometimes with positions at more than one institution, it’s tricky to determine their median salaries. In addition, colleges aren’t required to publicize information about their adjuncts’ salaries. Per-class earnings offer one way to analyze pay. Adjunct professors earned a median of $2,700 per semester-long class during the 2012-13 academic year, according to an AAUP survey of thousands of part-time faculty members. While varying classloads make it difficult to calculate the typical adjunct’s annual earnings, NPR reported in 2013 that the average yearly pay for adjuncts was between $20,000 and $25,000, and a March 2015 survey conducted by Pacific Standard among nearly 500 adjuncts found that a majority earn less than $20,000 a year from teaching.