This spring, adjunct faculty across the country are forming unions in order to raise workplace standards and build a national movement in higher education. On Saturday, April 12, 50 faculty from 10 St. Louis area colleges and universities met at the Missouri History Museum to build on the momentum they are creating to win a voice in their profession and to reverse the trend of low pay, few benefits and little job security.

“Adjuncts are teaching the majority of classes at many universities, yet we are excluded from any conversation about our own work conditions and how the university should be run, said Jeffrey Maret, an adjunct at Lindenwood University. “We need to get organized to get back in the dialogue and this symposium is a great way to get the conversation started.”

Part-time and non-tenure track faculty are now the majority of faculty at our colleges and universities and their numbers continue to increase. At the same time, revenues and tuition have increased steadily over the last two decades while spending on instruction has declined – and it’s adjuncts and their students who are suffering as a result.

A new study released at Saturday’s meeting explores how difficult it is for an adjunct instructor in St. Louis to afford basic necessities like housing, health care and food.

The report called the High Cost of Adjunct Living: St. Louis, finds that 80 percent or nearly 8,600 faculty members in the St. Louis area were not on the tenure track in 2011. All of the faculty at St. Louis’s for-profit colleges—close to 1,050 faculty employees—do not have access to the tenure system. The median pay per course was $2,700 for master’s level courses at private not-for-profit institutions and $3,000 for doctoral level courses at private not-for-profit institutions. This means an adjunct teaching 12 courses a year—an extraordinary course load—may have an annual income of just $32,400 below the 13 classes a year an instructor must teach to afford a median-priced home and utilities in St. Louis.

Lindenwood University adjunct instructor Andrew Nelson said, “There’s real momentum for changing the status quo and that’s reflected in the turnout today. Adjuncts in St. Louis are coming together, just like they are in other cities, to talk about how we can raise standards in higher education by uniting for our families and students.”