Adjunct professor

An adjunct is a professor who does not hold a permanent position at that particular academic institution. This may be someone with a job outside the academic institution teaching courses in a specialized field, or it may refer to persons hired to teach courses on a contractual basis (frequently renewable contracts). It is generally a part-time position with a teaching load below the minimum required to earn benefits (health care, life insurance, etc.), although the number of courses taught can vary from a single course to a full-time load (or even an overload).

An adjunct is generally not required to participate in the administrative responsibilities at the institution expected of other full-time professors, nor do they generally have research responsibilities. The pay for these positions is usually nominal, even though adjuncts typically hold a Ph.D., requiring most adjuncts to hold concurrent positions at several institutions or in industry. Due to the considerably lower salaries of adjunct professors, many universities in North America have reduced hiring of tenure-track faculty in favor of recruiting adjuncts on a contractual basis. Contingent faculty now make up more than half of all faculty positions in the United States.[15]

Adjuncts provide flexibility to the faculty, acting as additional teaching resources to be called up as necessary. However, their teaching load is variable: classes can be transferred from adjuncts to full-time professors, classes with low enrollment can be summarily canceled and the teaching schedule from one semester to the next can be unpredictable. Furthermore, if the university makes a good faith offer to an adjunct professor of teaching during the following semester depending on enrollment, the adjunct generally cannot file for unemployment during the break. In some cases, an adjunct may hold one of the standard ranks in another department, and be recognized with adjunct rank for making significant contributions to the department in question. Thus, e.g., one could be an "Associate Professor of Physics and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry."