More than one-third of faculty are adjuncts who receive low pay and limited job security, and new data shows that women, Black people and instructors in non-STEM disciplines are overrepresented in the adjunct ranks.

Those are some of the key takeaways from a new report about the state of the adjunct workforce that the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources published last week. During the 2024–25 academic year, the organization collected data from 263 institutions about a total of 43,279 adjuncts to understand how adjunct pay varies by discipline, institution type, race, gender and ethnicity. That makes the resulting Faculty in Higher Education Survey “the largest source available of current adjunct pay by discipline,” according to the report.

While adjuncts make up roughly 40 percent of all faculty—a share that hasn’t changed in a decade—they earn much less than their peers with permanent faculty appointments. According to the report, median pay per credit hour for adjuncts is $1,166, and only 37 percent are eligible for health insurance through their institution.

And the adjunct workforce that has to navigate that compensation is composed of more faculty from “historically underrepresented groups” than the tenure-track workforce, according to the report.

While 5 percent of tenure-track faculty are Black, they make up 10 percent of adjuncts; women compose 44 percent of tenure-track faculty but 57 percent of adjuncts. And race and gender disparities persist within the adjunct ranks, the report found. Black men and women, Hispanic men, and white women all receive $0.95 for every dollar that white male adjuncts are paid. These findings highlight “concerning inequities in pay and representation in the adjunct workforce,” the authors wrote.

Certain disciplines and institution types also rely more heavily than others on a revolving door of cheap adjunct labor.

STEM fields employ relatively few adjuncts, the report noted. For example, adjuncts make up just 3 percent of engineering faculty, 6 percent of physical sciences faculty and 8 percent of biology and biomedical sciences faculty. Meanwhile, adjuncts make up 32 percent of liberal arts and humanities faculty, 25 percent of security and protective services faculty, and 23 percent of education faculty.

“These differences in faculty makeup by discipline are likely related to variability in research funding across disciplines,” the authors of the report wrote. “Since adjuncts almost exclusively focus on teaching, STEM fields may be more likely to employ full-time faculty who serve as both educators and researchers in addition to having graduate students who may also teach courses.”

At private institutions, 46 percent of faculty are adjuncts compared to 36 percent at public institutions. But adjuncts are most common at associate degree–granting institutions, where they make up 66 percent of the faculty workforce, and least common at doctoral degree–granting institutions, where they account for 33 percent of faculty.

Adjunct pay also varies depending on where they teach. For a three-credit course, adjunct faculty at a research university typically earn about $711 more than adjunct faculty at a community college.

However, most adjuncts don’t rely on teaching as their only income source. The vast majority (79 percent) teach six or fewer credit hours at a time; according to the survey, only 7 percent of adjuncts teach 12 or more credit hours per term.

But that’s no excuse to keep their pay so low, the report said. “Even if most adjuncts do not rely on this pay for their primary source of income, they should be adequately compensated for their time and expertise.”

Correction: an earlier version of this article said the study surveyed 43,279 adjunct professors. However, the data was collected from 263 organizations about the adjunct workforce.