Profits Over Integrity

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Universities have spent the last several decades expanding the number of adjunct professors they hire, reducing full-time faculty and paying pauper’s wages to these part-time employees. Samuel Hazo explains how cutting full-time faculty is a disservice to academics in the pursuit of profits:

However, the recent trend toward hiring adjunct teachers and professors, competent though they may be, is part of the problem, as universities save and accrue money by not hiring full-time faculty. This is nothing but profiteering.

An adjunct is by definition one who is employed when the regular faculty is overburdened and needs supplementary help on a part-time basis. Or an adjunct is someone hired to provide special skills for a contracted period. Adjuncts were never meant to be hired en masse in lieu of hiring adequate numbers of full-time faculty.


Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com. More from this author →