The era of college courses taught mostly by tenured professors, who spend time on research and scholarly pursuits in addition to teaching, has been fading fast. Increasingly, the work of instructing students now rests with lecturers or adjuncts — non-tenure-track faculty, almost always working part time for less money and with almost no job security.

On a per-hour basis they might make $70 to $120. But that’s only for the hours they’re in front of a classroom. The outside-of-class responsibilities easily triple their workload. They must plan lessons, grade papers and tests, write letters of recommendation, deal with students’ other needs and hold office hours — in whatever space they can find because they’re seldom assigned an office. They usually can be let go for a semester or forever, even if they’ve worked at the institution for a decade or more, for any reason or no reason at all. Nearly a quarter of them rely on some form of public assistance, usually unemployment insurance between semesters and academic years, according to a 2020 report by the American Federation of Teachers.

This is good neither for the instructor nor the student.

Fifty years ago, 80% of instructors were tenure-track professors; now almost that percentage are adjuncts. Parents who are forking over big money for their kids’ education generally have little idea about the change.

Right now, according to author Joe Berry said, part-time contingent workers make up 75% of college instructors in the U.S. and teach more than half of the college courses.

If those adjuncts cobble together a full-time load of three courses, they might make $50,000 to $70,000 per academic year — less than most K-12 teachers in California.

This isn’t good for students, either. Though some adjunct faculty members put in an enormous number of unpaid hours for the love of their job, others find that kind of workload unrealistic.

Perhaps even more problematic in the overreliance on part-time instructors is the diminishment of academic freedom. Most adjuncts know that they can be let go for any reason and may avoid saying anything remotely controversial to students. Even their personal social media accounts could become fodder for student complaints.

These days, colleges can always find a fresh face to replace the one they pushed out, even though adjuncts are generally as educated as tenured professors, or have long experience in certain careers that is of immediate benefit to students.

Only about 20% of non-tenure-track faculty are unionized, a number that probably will rise now. Whether it does or not, colleges and universities have been placed on notice: They can’t operate without adjuncts, so for the benefit of their students, academic freedom and instructional stability, they should pay and treat these instructors fairly.