This is not about the teaching discipline. I am a Computer Science adjunct, and the salary I get from teaching is equivalent to what the article mentions.
I only do this because I like teaching, so this is not my main source of income. I am not in the verge of homelessness because I do programming for a living. But the problem is still the same: Universities are charging astronomical tuitions and then paying a laughable part of them to teachers.
It does not make any sense, and IMO that explains in part why University education is losing its value: you get overworked and unmotivated teachers as a student, so you may better learn your stuff online.
> I only do this because I like teaching, so this is not my main source of income.
IMO, this is what adjuncting excels at: supplementing your full time instructors with professionals spending most of their time in the workforce. This more or less happens in CS, but service departments like Math or English end up replacing the majority of their instructors with adjuncts working at 2-3 colleges.
Sadly, this trend does make sense and is easy to diagnose. Instructor salaries have stagnated despite increased student tuition because states have, for the past few decades consistently cut higher education funding. I was laid off from a self-funded university unit amid a very real concern that the state's failure to raise taxes to pay for pensions would ultimately impact the university's funding, and while this was not the immediate cause for the unit's layoffs, it was absolutely a factor in whether to cover the unit's budget shortfall.
That's way too much for an adjunct. The article refers to 6 courses per semester, so she's probably pulling 12 per year at around $3k per course (assuming she's not teaching in summer).
Just so you have an idea, 4 courses per semester amount to what would be a full time job (if done right). In my experience most adjuncts / instructors have to teach up to 6 courses per semester, which results in them either being overworked, or doing a shitty job at teaching.
Not that this invalidates your conclusion, I find the difference between what the school charges versus what goes into the teachers' salary mind boggling.
I only do this because I like teaching, so this is not my main source of income. I am not in the verge of homelessness because I do programming for a living. But the problem is still the same: Universities are charging astronomical tuitions and then paying a laughable part of them to teachers.
It does not make any sense, and IMO that explains in part why University education is losing its value: you get overworked and unmotivated teachers as a student, so you may better learn your stuff online.