The case for justice for adjuncts

In the United States, about 40% of classes in colleges and universities are taught by adjunct faculty. In recent years, adjuncts and their advocates have argued that such faculty are treated immorally by their employers: working long hours for comparatively little pay, with no benefits or job security, and with little respect within the university. The description of adjunct working conditions is generally accepted as accurate, but there is debate about whether institutional treatment of adjuncts amounts to injustice. There three main reasons why universities – and many full-time faculty – argue that such conditions are morally allowable: first, that adjuncts choose their work in a free and open labor market with many non-academic options; second, that remedying the situation would require tremendous amounts of money, and raising it would unjustly burden students; and third, that changing the status quo would not necessarily help all current adjuncts. I argue that the treatment of adjuncts is unjust by taking these three defenses of the status quo in turn. I first focus on the ethics of sweatshops, which helps to show that a freely chosen job can still be exploitive and unjust, and leads to the idea that the morally required solution is to convert adjunct-taught faculty into Full-time Lecturer positions. I then argue that much of the problem could be solved with a 10% increase in tuition (or other revenue), which is an acceptable price to pay to create a more just environment. Third, I argue that even if there are short-term disruptions, protecting the marginal utility of some workers is not justification for maintaining an unjust economic system. I conclude by noting that many universities say that social justice is a central part of their missions, which makes their continuation of an unjust two-tiered system of faculty employment particularly problematic.