Julia Hudson-Richards loves helping college freshmen gain a deeper understanding of the past. Creating scholars of history, she believes, is vital to society. But she stops short of encouraging her students to follow her career path. In fact, she has advised against it.
Opening the books
Investigating how Pittsburgh’s wealthiest universities invest their billions
Hudson-Richards got her doctoral degree in modern European history in 2008. She now works as an adjunct instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching courses on world history and the history of food on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and at Duquesne University, teaching two sections of world history on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
She earns a fraction of what she would earn if she were a full-time professor with tenure, a status conferring strong job security. She doesn’t want students to take on debt to enter a field where there are fewer long-term opportunities, but it pains her to tell prospective scholars that their work “has to be a labor of love because there’s no job security in it.”
“Would I be able to live and support myself in the Greater Pittsburgh area on just these four courses? No, no I would not, especially not with the increased cost of living that we’ve seen over the last year,” Hudson-Richards said. “That would be very, very difficult for me to do without another person.”
For decades, universities have increasingly relied on adjuncts, who are hired on a semesterly basis, and faculty with short-term contracts, according to the American Association of University Professors. They’re typically paid less than other professors, but adjuncts face the starkest gaps.
While the average associate professor makes about $110,000 a year, the average adjunct earns up to $5,000 per class. Some adjuncts view their teaching jobs as supplemental income and may teach one or two courses a semester, while others cobble together more courses as their primary form of employment.
The pay leaves many adjunct instructors feeling precarious: The American Federation of Teachers found in 2022 that almost a quarter of surveyed adjuncts felt anxious about affording enough food, and nearly half did not seek needed health care. About 45% of the survey respondents worked at four-year public and private universities.
The trend stretches back to at least the late 1980s, when a greater proportion of faculty had jobs on the “tenure track.”
Faculty with tenure tend to earn more money, though they have different job responsibilities, and they can be fired only under extreme circumstances. Researchers say the robust job security allows tenured faculty to better advocate for institutional change and teach controversial ideas without punishment or interference, including in tense political climates.
Several professors and researchers said the shift away from tenure means that a growing share of instructors may feel less able to challenge students academically. They may also be hesitant to advocate for changes to curriculum and the student experience and, in the case of adjuncts, spread too thin to fully attend to their students.
On the other hand, short-term positions provide colleges with greater flexibility in hiring, which can help institutions that are concerned about their financial outlook or are dealing with fluctuating enrollment numbers. The trend is partly in response to declining state funding for public universities, an issue of particular concern in Pennsylvania.
And changes may soon be on the way at Pitt, as the university last week reached a tentative agreement with the faculty union’s bargaining committee on a first contract. If the rest of the union ratifies the contract, the university will implement a salary floor for all faculty in May and July. Adjunct faculty on Pitt’s main campus, like Hudson-Richards, would earn at least $7,500 for teaching a three-credit course.
Contract aside, several professors at Pitt with short-term positions said the university has supported them in some ways, including by ensuring they have consistent teaching opportunities. Hudson-Richards said the university has improved adjuncts’ access to low-cost insurance and allows them to contribute to a 401k.
A Pitt spokesperson declined to respond to questions about trends in tenure. Peter Kerwin, a spokesperson for CMU, said that positions off the tenure track fulfill specific needs at the university and added that, “with this context, there has not been a ‘shift’ away from tenure track positions and the statistics you reference are inaccurate.” He did not provide alternate statistics to PublicSource.
Kerwin said that “it is not possible to make generalizations” about the role adjuncts play at the university. CMU “believes that it is appropriately compensating adjunct faculty based on the nature of their engagement and appointments,” he said.
A nationwide shift
Pittsburgh’s four-year universities employed about 4,350 instructors on part-time or short-term contracts in fall 2022, according to the American Association of University Professors. There may be overlap given that some instructors work at multiple universities.
Instructors with these employment structures made up about 63% and 58% of instructors on Pitt’s main campus and at Carnegie Mellon University, respectively. Of those, part-time employees, which include adjuncts, accounted for about a quarter of the instructors at each school.
Nationally, more than two-thirds of faculty did not have tenure-track jobs in fall 2021.
Tyler McAndrew has been an adjunct at Pitt for several years. This spring, he said he will earn roughly $10,000 for teaching two classes. He enjoys working in the English Department and said that leadership, including his department chair, try to ensure he’s teaching each semester and solidify his upcoming contracts early on.
The nature of his work has posed some challenges, though.
“It can be tough to support students,” McAndrew said. “People are asking, ‘What classes are you teaching next semester? And I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’”
“Or, students might be asking for letters of recommendation,” he continued. “It’s hard to feel like I can put a lot into those relationships with students when the institution is not putting a lot into its relationship with me.”
To balance his paycheck, McAndrew, 37, has worked as a mail carrier, in daycares and in writing centers at other universities. He now teaches fiction writing at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12, a part-time job that has given him the most stability he’s had since working as an adjunct. He lives modestly, he said. He rarely goes on vacation, and he and his wife bought their first car and moved into a two-bedroom apartment last year.
There are several reasons tenure has eroded nationally, researchers and professors said. Tenured positions can lock universities into long-term commitments to salaries worth millions of dollars, said Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“Colleges are concerned about their financial futures, and committing to tenure-track faculty is very expensive,” Kelchen said, adding that breaking the contracts can involve the “difficult and demoralizing” closure of entire departments or programs.
Public universities may also cut spending on faculty salaries to offset declines in state funding. Pennsylvania ranked second-to-last nationally in its funding per full-time student during the 2022 fiscal year, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
Pitt has competing priorities for spending, said Chris Bonneau, a tenured professor and current member of the Pitt Board of Trustees’ Budget Committee. He believes the university has struck a “good balance” between investing in instructors and other interests that support its mission, citing the BioForge project.
He added that, while relying on adjuncts is “horrible,” finding solutions on a limited budget can come with trade-offs, such as increasing the teaching workload for tenured faculty. He also said that hiring more full-time instructors who are off the tenure track can allow faculty with tenure to devote more time to research instead of teaching.
“Reasonable people could disagree” on whether the university should spend its money in better ways, said Bonneau, who served as president of the faculty senate for several years.
Saranna Thornton, a professor of economics and business, said the shift away from tenure has a real impact on the academic experience. She has conducted research for the American Association of University Professors, a member association for faculty that engages in advocacy and seeks to “advance the rights of academics.”
“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions,” Thornton said. “The mission of universities is education and discovery of new knowledge, and people need to have job security to do that.”
John Stoner joined Pitt in 2010, taking a full-time position in the Department of History without the opportunity for tenure. He turned down a tenure-track position in upstate New York for the role, partly because of Pitt’s reputation and potential job opportunities for his wife in Pittsburgh.
He has a five-year contract with the university, where he teaches courses on U.S. foreign relations, the Cold War and modern South Africa. He said his courses frequently touch on politics and fraught social issues. He wants his students to feel welcomed but challenged academically.
“I have never felt really particularly restrained, in the sense that I teach what I think is important to teach,” Stoner said, adding that he has positive relationships with university leaders. However, he’s also “mindful of the fact that, for either financial or political purposes, I could lose my job after that contract ends.”
Union seeks improved pay
Glenn Colby, senior researcher at the American Association of University Professors, said universities should respond to the decline in tenure-track positions by incrementally offering faculty longer contracts with greater job security. The institutions should also ensure that faculty who are off the tenure track are able to participate in the governance of the university, he said.
Reversing the decline of tenure is challenging because of the underlying financial pressures, Kelchen said. He said Pitt and CMU, both prominent research institutions, will likely offer tenure to “outstanding” faculty to recruit top-notch talent.
Regardless of the state of tenure, some members of the faculty union at Pitt say that a ratified contract will provide greater job security to instructors. Pitt and the union’s bargaining committee have tentatively agreed on a contract that would create a $60,000 salary floor for most full-time faculty, according to committee member Tyler Bickford.
Faculty would also see their employment contracts automatically renewed under certain circumstances. The faculty have been negotiating the contract — which would last through June 2026 — for more than a year.
Jared Stonesifer, a spokesperson for Pitt, said the university is “very pleased” to have reached a tentative agreement with the bargaining committee. “The university values our faculty and their countless contributions to our Pitt community and this agreement demonstrates the university’s significant investment in our faculty,” he said.
The contract would improve the lives of almost all of Pitt’s faculty, especially those who are in the most precarious positions, Bickford said. In an earlier interview, he said that faculty need protections that support academic freedom and participation in the governance of the university.
“Whether that’s called tenure or a good union contract, I don’t think matters at all,” he said.
“What matters is that faculty have the protections they need to do our jobs well, and to serve our students and serve the public.”
Correction (4/30/24): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the new minimum pay for adjuncts under the pending United Steelworkers agreement. The minimum pay is $7,500.
Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.
