Adjunct professor is paid so little she's actually homeless (community college, degree, wages)

[jtur88]

Are adjunct professors supposed to be paid? I have a friend who is an Adjunct Professor or Art/Ceramics at a major state university, and he lives with his mother, and they support themselves distributing weekly shopper publications to little mountain towns, because his mother has a car. And a drivers license, he let his lapse so the department of welfare couldn't make him get a job. I think he is paid a dollars a year and faculty access to university amenities, which he is quite happpy with..

[Momma_bear]

Most people would be homeless if they were trying to live off of a part time job.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by ackmondual

[shrug] when you can't pay your bills, you can't pay your bills. Beats being homeless, like the poor woman in this thread.

I'm saying, I don't think it's a large subset that makes money that way. It made for a good TV show is all.

[charlygal]

Originally Posted by ackmondual

Unfortunately, for most of us, academia doesn't pay enough.

Not true. Most actual professors make over $50k even at small schools.

The person in the article is not a professor. She is a part time adjunct. HUGE difference.

[ackmondual]

Originally Posted by charlygal

Not true. Most actual professors make over $50k even at small schools.

The person in the article is not a professor. She is a part time adjunct. HUGE difference.

But just how many professors are there? In some of the public schools along the east coast, it's the lecturers who carry the majority of the work load for far less than that. Much like the bottom rung fast food employees, if they just left one day, they'd have a serious shortage of labor.

[jtab4994]

Originally Posted by Cida

This is awful, how little we pay teachers.

Correction: She was a teacher, now she is an adjunct, or part-time professor.

She was paid handsomely as a New York City schoolteacher but she quit in 2006.

She has sustained a very poor career decision for a number of years.

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by WildColonialGirl

A full time teaching load is four sections. They each normally pay $2-3000. Is $24,000 a year a good wage for someone with a PhD?

Adjunct Project

A full time professor is paid a salary, not just for each class he/she teaches. More often than not, research and publishing is a part of the job description.

Adjuncts are paid by the class, and they generally have no other duties to the university other than teaching and class preparation.

[Jesse44]

What is the range (yearly) for a part-time prof in NYC? It would help if she told how much she actually makes.

[boxus]

She may be educated, but she is an idiot.

"A student's paper flew out of the car", really? Too stupid to put them in a folder or something? Too stupid to understand you need to obtain another job and/or move to a low cost of living area? She thinks she is entitled to live in NYC at some sort of minimal lifestyle?

[Amelorn]

It sounds like she is teaching around 2 classes per semester. She didn't get her master's until 2010, when she was 49. Bear in mind that she lacks a PhD. That's a plan for failure in academia.