Inside Higher Ed
by Colleen Flaherty
February 24, 2022
A new study from the American Federation of Teachers shines a harsh light on working conditions for adjunct professors—and provides additional insight into how the pandemic has affected this faculty group in particular.
The upshot: adjunct academic work was precarious even before the pandemic, and the coronavirus made “a grave situation even worse.”
“When campuses were shut down in March 2020, adjuncts were given only hours to move their classes online, often without sufficient training or technical support to make the transition successful,” the study says. “They faced an academic year of uncertain enrollments and employment prospects, compounded by the anxieties of being asked to return to the classroom amid a checkered public health response to the pandemic.”