College Adjuncts Are Poor. It’s Crippling The System

“Academic precarity is the year-to-year or class-to-class, contingent, underpaid and labor-intensive employment status most Ph.D.s now have to navigate while seeking a protected tenure-track position. After, say, eight years of graduate school, this tacks on another two to four to ten years at a $20-$40,000/year salary. We have crossed over into our thirties and forties in sustained poverty, now separated from our graduate communities and parceled into departments and towns in which we have no belonging or protection.”