When I Was Dissed as an Adjunct Faculty Member, I Spoke Up

I didn’t expect my credentials to be doubted. Not after years of advanced study, teaching experience, and a CV once praised as impressive.

But in higher education, even the most prepared adjuncts quickly learn how disposable we are.

When I was first hired as an adjunct at a public university in a large metropolitan area, I assumed my credentials would speak for themselves. I had earned a master’s degree at an Ivy League institution, studied with one of the most prominent sociolinguists in the field, and was a PhD candidate at a nationally recognized graduate program. My department chair at the time even said they were impressed by my experience.

But a year later, when the course I taught was no longer available, I asked the chair about teaching the department’s introduction to writing course. Their response stunned me: They weren’t sure I was qualified.

It didn’t matter that I was already teaching college-level courses, producing advanced academic writing, and training in a rigorous program. What mattered was power. And in academia, adjuncts don’t have it.

That moment made visible the structural exploitation so many of us live with as so-called contingent faculty. Adjuncts are treated as temporary labor—our expertise doubted, our pay kept low, our futures uncertain—while the institutions that rely on our work pretend this system is sustainable. We are asked to provide the same intellectual labor and student support as full-time faculty while being told, implicitly and explicitly, that we are disposable.

When a new department chair stepped in, I chose to act differently. I set up a meeting—not to be evaluated, but to insist on being recognized. I stated my qualifications, my research, and my value as a teacher and scholar. That act of speaking up mattered. Later, when this chair learned about my dissertation—focused on language patterns in the very city where we live—they invited me to design and teach a new course for upper-level majors.

That opportunity was not given to me because the system is fair. It came because I refused silence. And silence is exactly what the system depends on from adjuncts—politeness, acquiescence, and quiet endurance while we carry the institution on our backs.

My story is not unique. Across higher education, adjuncts and contingent faculty make up the majority of the teaching workforce, yet we face job insecurity, often poverty-level pay, and constant disrespect. Institutions depend on our labor, but they refuse to recognize our worth.

Standing up for myself that day didn’t end adjunct precarity. But it reminded me that our collective power begins with refusing to internalize the lie that we are less than. Adjunct labor is not disposable; it is exploited. Across the country, adjunct unions and faculty coalitions are proving that when we name the exploitation out loud, together, we can start to demand fair pay, job security, respect—and ultimately the transformation of higher education.