The article “TAs, Profs. Drop Union Efforts” (Dec. 4, p. 1) inaccurately states that “adjunct faculty members earn about $58,000 per year, while full-time faculty members earn about $103,000 per year.” The article fails to differentiate between ranks of full-time, tenured faculty and to accurately report the true salary range of adjuncts, who make up approximately 65 percent of the faculty at GW.
Full-time, tenured faculty salaries vary according to rank – full, associate or assistant professor – and school. The latest available salary figures for full-time faculty gives the average salary for a full professor in the academic year 2001-02 as $103,000, though this ranged from a low of $88,044 in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences to a high of $153,168 in the Law School. The average for an assistant – not an adjunct – professor was $58,000.
This mistake pales in comparison to the assertion that adjunct faculty earn “$58,000 per year.” Even discussing per-year salaries is misleading, as adjuncts are paid by the course, sign no contracts, are never assured of a job from one semester to the next and sometimes do not know whether the course they have been given will, in fact, take place. Indeed, adjuncts are told they will be teaching a course, order books, construct a syllabus, and do all the preparation work, only to find out two days into the semester that the course will not be given. And only sometimes is this because of under-enrollment. Therefore, they have no job, or only half the job they thought they had, at which point it is often too late to find work at another school to cover the shortfall.
As far as adjuncts’ actual salaries, most make between $2,500 and $3,000 per course and teach two courses a semester. Even at the highest end of the adjunct pay scale, where instructors generally make $4,200 per course, an adjunct can expect to make only $16,800 per year. A mere handful of adjuncts make this much, with the vast majority earning an average of $12,000 dollars over the course of an academic year, assuming two courses in both fall and spring.
Between 1996-97 and 2001-02, salaries have gone up each and every year for full-time, tenured faculty in all schools and at all ranks. Needless to say, the salaries of those in the administration have also gone up. GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg now makes close to $600,000 while living rent-free. In stark contrast, adjunct salaries have been frozen at their present rates since 1999. This is a far cry from making the $58,000 a year as cited.
While full-time and administrative salaries have gone up and adjunct salaries have been frozen, tuition and fees have risen, making GW one of the most expensive universities in the country. The tuition of one student alone exceeds the salaries of two adjuncts for a year. Whether or not the adjuncts choose to unionize in the future, fairness would dictate improved salaries at the very least and will determine whether you see your professors sipping or serving at Starbucks in the future.
-The writer is an adjunct instructor in the English department.
