These insecurities weigh heavily on adjuncts. We have to always have one eye on our classroom and the other on the horizon. With no assurances of continued employment, we become gypsy professors, transient, never laying our heads on the same spot for long. This has to take a toll on how we educate students.

As an adjunct, I teach five courses across two different institutions. All five courses are introductory composition and filled with college freshman. Despite my dedication and education, I am still a wet-behind-the-ears professor. I’ve just embarked on my teaching career but am expected, and little-supported, to engage students on their first semester.

For the upcoming spring semester, I’ve only been given four courses, all Composition II Many of my current Composition I students plan on taking my classes again. I’m grateful that they believe in my abilities enough to trust their futures with me. Yet, not everyone can see me in the spring. Based on the simple math that five courses’ worth of students need to fit into four, some are going to be shut out. I want to be there for them but, simply put, can’t.

Data cited by Scott Jaschik of Inside High Ed shows that freshman students are far less likely to remain at institutions if exposed to under-supported adjunct faculty members. Full-time faculty members and adjuncts that receive adequate resources, such as pay and guarantees of employment, can be a check on this tendency. If adjuncts know they’re welcome to stay awhile, they can unpack their belongings and form relationships with their students and the culture at their institution.

Considering that college retention rates nationwide, barely crack two-thirds, institutions would be well suited to ensuring that their adjuncts are supported. These are the instructors that staff the introductory, survey courses that freshmen take. It isn’t until much later in students’ careers that they encounter core faculty members that staff the more advanced courses. By that time, it may be too late.

Turning freshmen off of school, or forcing them to another institution and thereby delaying their graduation, disrupting their experiences, or adding to their debt, has to be seen as a violation of higher education’s mission to further human flourishing.

Those that instruct freshmen should be the most supported of all faculty members, given all the guarantees in the world that their work matters, that their presence at the academy is valued, that they won’t be told to not come back.

I consider myself lucky that I’m getting those classes in the spring. I’m grateful to teach, to work, to earn money to feed myself. But this hand-to-mouth existence shouldn’t be the norm. The injustices suffered by adjuncts, justified by budgetary necessity, ends up hurting students. That is the last thing institutional policy should impede. Under-supported adjuncts means under-engaged students.

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