Who's Doing the Teaching at Universities? The Hidden Labor Crisis in Higher Education
Walk into almost any large American university today, and there is a reasonable chance the person standing at the front of the classroom is not a tenured professor. They may be a graduate student earning a modest stipend, an adjunct instructor working without job security or benefits, or a part-time lecturer cobbling together a living by teaching at multiple institutions simultaneously. The question of who is actually doing the teaching at universities has become one of the most pressing—and least publicly discussed—issues in higher education today.
Rachel Toor and former West Virginia University president E. Gordon Gee have tackled this subject head-on, diving into what many academics describe as a quiet but deeply consequential labor crisis. Their conversation reflects growing concern across the academic world about the sustainability, equity, and quality of instructional work at the collegiate level.
The Shift Away from Tenure-Track Faculty
For much of the twentieth century, the default assumption was that college courses were taught by full-time, tenure-track professors—scholars who had devoted years to earning doctorates, who maintained active research agendas, and who enjoyed a measure of job security that allowed them to pursue controversial ideas and mentor students over the long term. That model, while never universal, represented an aspirational standard for what university teaching should look like.
That assumption no longer holds. According to data from the American Association of University Professors, roughly 70 percent of all faculty positions in the United States are now off the tenure track. A significant portion of undergraduate instruction—particularly in introductory and general education courses—is delivered by adjunct instructors, visiting lecturers, and graduate teaching assistants. The traditional tenured professor has, in many departments and institutions, become a minority presence in the actual work of classroom teaching.
This shift did not happen overnight. It accelerated through decades of budget pressures, administrative expansion, and an oversupply of doctoral graduates competing for a shrinking pool of permanent academic jobs. Institutions discovered that hiring contingent faculty was dramatically cheaper than maintaining tenure lines, and the savings proved irresistible during periods of financial strain.
Who Are the People Actually Teaching?
Understanding the labor landscape of university teaching requires recognizing its diversity. Not all non-tenure-track instructors share the same circumstances, motivations, or challenges.
- Adjunct faculty are part-time instructors hired on a course-by-course basis, often paid per section—sometimes as little as two to four thousand dollars per course—with no guarantee of employment from one semester to the next. Many hold terminal degrees in their fields and would prefer permanent positions but cannot find them. They typically receive no benefits, no office space, and minimal institutional support.
- Full-time non-tenure-track instructors occupy a middle ground. They may have multi-year contracts and somewhat greater stability, but they generally lack the research expectations and governance rights that come with tenure-track appointments. Their teaching loads are often heavier than their tenured colleagues.
- Graduate teaching assistants are doctoral students who teach introductory courses as part of their funding packages. At research universities, a substantial share of undergraduate instruction in writing, mathematics, foreign languages, and introductory sciences is delivered by graduate students who are simultaneously navigating their own dissertations and professional development.
- Visiting and term-appointed faculty hold temporary positions, sometimes funded by grants or by the temporary absence of a permanent faculty member. Their situations vary enormously by institution and discipline.
What Does This Mean for Students?
The implications for undergraduate students are real, though often invisible to them. Students in large introductory courses frequently have no idea whether their instructor is tenured, contingent, or a graduate student. Institutional marketing materials rarely highlight the distinction, and in many cases the teaching quality of contingent instructors is excellent—often because their professional identity is built entirely around teaching rather than divided between research and instruction.
However, the structural vulnerabilities of contingent employment create conditions that are difficult for even the most dedicated instructors to overcome. An adjunct with no office, no job security, and courses at three different institutions cannot realistically offer the same depth of mentorship, availability, or curricular continuity that a full-time faculty member can. Students who need sustained academic support, career guidance, or research mentorship are particularly disadvantaged when the faculty they interact with most frequently are the least institutionally empowered.
There is also a curricular dimension to consider. Contingent instructors often have limited or no voice in designing programs, setting academic standards, or shaping the direction of departments. When the people doing the most teaching have the least institutional authority, the alignment between who teaches and who decides what gets taught becomes deeply fractured.
The Human Cost of Academic Contingency
Beyond the structural concerns lies a deeply human story. Thousands of highly educated, intellectually passionate people are working in conditions of financial precarity and professional invisibility. Many hold doctoral degrees from prestigious institutions. Many have published scholarship, won teaching awards, and devoted themselves to their students with remarkable dedication. Yet they remain on the margins of the institutions they serve—excluded from faculty meetings, denied access to research funding, and erased from the public narratives universities tell about themselves.
This situation raises urgent ethical questions. Universities speak routinely about their commitment to equity, inclusion, and the dignity of work. Whether those commitments extend to the instructors who carry so much of the actual teaching burden is a question that faculty governance bodies, administrators, and trustees are increasingly being asked to answer.
Toward Solutions: What Would a Fairer System Look Like?
Toor and Gee's conversation points toward a broader reckoning that many in higher education believe is overdue. A number of institutions have begun experimenting with reforms: converting long-serving adjuncts to more stable contract positions, establishing minimum per-course pay rates, extending benefits to part-time instructors, and creating formal pathways for contingent faculty to participate in shared governance.
Advocates argue that sustainable solutions require universities to be honest about the teaching that contingent faculty perform and to compensate it accordingly. This may mean reducing administrative costs, rethinking the research-teaching balance among tenure-track faculty, or acknowledging that some institutions have expanded enrollment and programmatic offerings beyond what their permanent faculty can realistically serve.
The conversation about who is doing the teaching is, ultimately, a conversation about what universities are for—and whether the people most responsible for delivering on that purpose are being treated in a manner consistent with the values institutions claim to hold.
Conclusion: A Reckoning That Can No Longer Be Deferred
The labor problem in higher education is not a peripheral issue. It sits at the very center of what universities do and who they serve. As figures like Rachel Toor and E. Gordon Gee continue to raise these questions publicly, the hope is that candid dialogue will translate into structural change. Students deserve to know who is teaching them and under what conditions. Instructors deserve workplaces that honor their contributions. And universities that claim to be engines of knowledge, justice, and human flourishing would do well to start by looking honestly at the people in their own classrooms.