Teaching is often suggested to artists or other content creators needing to make more money without getting a second job or side work. If that work involves teaching adults, students eighteen and older, it typically takes the form of “adjunct” or part-time, term-by-term teaching for colleges and universities. Taking on classes by the term can be a great supplement to the income of an artist or other content creator, but it is important to keep things in perspective.
Never work an adjunct teaching job as though it were your full-time, permanent job
Colleges and universities seeking a full-time, permanent faculty member in your field will advertise for and hire one. They are never going to treat an adjunct like a full-time employee. Even if you have been in a university’s adjunct pool for more than a decade, and you’ve had classes to teach each term, the department head may decline to offer you classes at any time, for any reason. It will not make a difference if you are teaching three classes, and someone who is a full-time, permanent member of the faculty is also teaching three classes. The pay you are earning to teach those classes is much lower than the salary that person is getting. You may be offered some benefits, but you will not be offered the same benefits as a full-time worker.
Obey the rules, treat everyone with respect, and do the work you agreed to do when you signed on to teach the classes. Just don’t grow overly attached to any one school, take on an excessive amount of extra work, or fill the rest of your day with unpaid additional work for the college or university.
Think of adjunct teaching as one part of your career in music, writing, video content creation, etc. and approach each term of teaching for a school as a long but individual project in your overall career. It’s much too involved to be brushed off as a “side gig,” but it is detrimental to both your finances and your mental health to treat an adjunct position like the core of your career.
Get in as many adjunct pools as you can, but accept offers to teach classes carefully
Adjunct teachers are a cross between employees and independent workers. On paper, you work for the school. You get the same tax forms, employee handbooks, keys, and ID cards as an employee. Unfortunately, this means the process also starts with a job application and interviews. Go through as many of those as you possibly can within reason considering your own career focus and goals. If you’re a Utica-based musician, apply to the music department’s adjunct pool at all of the area colleges and universities, but skip all of the online, for-profit schools that pop up when you search for application information. If your career focus is online because you’re building a TikTok channel or a YouTube channel where you write and present reports and commentary on true crime, then you might want to join the criminal justice and writing or communication pools at all the online colleges and universities, and skip the local schools. Someone who wants to build a local career, but also needs some time at home to work on an album or a novel might want to apply to both online and local schools. There is no set number of adjunct pools that is right for everybody.
The independent worker part comes once you’re hired. Being hired as an adjunct/added to the “adjunct pool” means being added to a group of screened people the department head can offer classes on a term by term basis. The department heads at each school will offer you classes each semester just as any other type of client offers you gigs, readings, or other work. Some schools will automatically offer you classes. Others you will have to reach out to and remind them that you’re available in order to get offers.
Avoid automatically accepting every class you get offered at multiple schools. Carefully consider how much other work you have to do and what your financial needs are before accepting each course or set of courses. A musician whose only other expected income for the next six months is a single fifty-dollar gig each month may want to accept an offer to teach three classes at one school and two at another for the upcoming term, while turning down all adjunct teaching offers during a period full of high-paying gigs. Department heads at reputable colleges and universities are not going to get angry and never speak to you again if you tell them you’re not available to teach for a term, or that you can only accept one class.
Remember that you’re going to find good teaching gigs and bad teaching gigs, just like with any other work in your career.
You probably have a favorite place to play, display or sell your visual art projects, or read or lecture on your books. There are probably plenty more places that are unremarkable, but a solid part of the job when you’re an artist. And there may be a few places you wouldn’t step foot in unless your bank account was down to its last dollar and there was a single dusty can of expired corn in your kitchen cupboards.
The same thing will happen when you teach as an adjunct for colleges and universities. One school will introduce you to a supervisor who treats you like a professional in your field, does all they can to accommodate you with scheduling, and offers you courses to teach on a steady basis. Most of the students in your classes will be there to learn, and will be engaged in the material and hard-working on their assignments. In the second school that hires you on as an adjunct, the department head may be great, but not offer you much work, with students who are half there to learn and half there just to play sports or party. Apply to a third school, and you might get somebody who behaves as though you’re supposed to beg them to “let” you teach a one-credit, half-term course that barely pays enough to cover the lunches you’re stuck buying from their cafeteria because you have to schedule office hours that every student ignores, but prevent you from going home. Focus on the best ones, and quietly keep the others at arm’s length, just as you would with any other type of work.
Be aware of the expenses commonly associated with teaching as an adjunct
Everything you absolutely need to teach the classes should be provided to you. Classroom space, a projector, a computer or computers, a dedicated email address, and online space to collect papers and post grades will be given to you. You should also be given a free instructor copy of any textbook you select, as long as you select it from the available options at the school store.
Buy your own dry erase markers for the boards, and any pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, index cards, folders, or other small school supplies you may want to use. You might be able to find these around a faculty lounge or other faculty center for free, or find some around your classrooms. But don’t count on it. Dry erase pens are especially prone to getting carted off or destroyed. It’s better to stop at Dollar Tree or the school supply sale at Walmart and invest five or ten dollars in your adjunct teaching career than to make a roomful of students wait while you find the one working dry erase marker in the room.
Some schools offer adjuncts access to at least one of the school fitness centers or gyms, you will have borrowing privileges at their library, but food and drinks as perks tend to be pretty limited. There may be free water, tea, and coffee available in a teacher’s lounge, maybe some candy or granola bars in a bowl, but that’s about it. Should you need to stay on campus for one or more meals, you will need to either pack one for yourself from home or purchase something in the cafeteria.
Understand the difference between not-for-profit and for-profit schools
Traditional colleges and universities are responsible to the community they serve. There is always going to be a lot of money circulating and there is always going to be departmental and campus-wide politics, making the college or university look and function a lot like a business. Still, the school’s ultimate responsibility, their primary focus, is to produce educated members of their community. Some do that better than others, with some schools known around the world for their academic rigor and relevance, and other schools known as places students come to party, play sports, or hang out until their rich relatives feel like giving them a job, but educating the students is always meant to be the ultimate goal.
For-profit colleges and universities are responsible to the corporation that owns the school. Their ultimate goal, the primary reason they exist, is to make money for their shareholders. Some for-profit schools simply do an extreme amount of advertising, and focus on academic rigor anyway. Others are one tiny step above diploma mills. These schools emphasize “happy customers” over educated students. Education matters little, as long as people keep buying classes from them. Being made to grade work that was obviously AI generated simply because the student will not admit to cheating, teaching “college” lessons more suitable to a seventh or even sixth grade class and then being bullied into giving nothing lower than a “B” for anything that isn’t left unfinished, and getting classes full of students who are openly there to buy their degree and are hostile to anyone who tries to teach them anything are all experiences you can expect at many for-profit schools. You may be just an adjunct, but the atmosphere of the school is going to impact your work experience for the entire time you’re there.
Anyone interested in teaching as an adjunct can find specific information for the departments and schools whose pools they wish to join on each school’s official website. For a general search of online opportunities, visit the website “Higher Ed Jobs” at www.higheredjobs.com
By Jess Santacroce
Writer/Editor: The 315
Stock photo
Inspiration: Heather (Toth) Sartini, a main character in several of my novels, works online as an adjunct teacher.
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Well written, highly informative article.