New Crowdsourcing website for adjuncts

January 4, 2013
Adjunct Project Reveals Wide Range in Pay

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By Audrey Williams June and Jonah Newman


Five years ago, Margaret Hanzimanolis was fed up with working as an adjunct professor in Vermont, teaching six courses for about $24,000 a year, without health insurance. So she moved across the country to Northern California, where at least 20 colleges were within a 90-minute drive, to begin her life as an adjunct anew.

Within days of her arrival, Ms. Hanzimanolis was hired to teach basic writing courses at De Anza College. Then she landed adjunct positions at Cañada College, City College of San Francisco, and Evergreen Valley College. She taught 13 classes year-round and earned $88,000 a year, she says. More important, after 18 months of teaching she was eligible for health benefits. The California wages are higher in part because the cost of living is greater there than in Vermont, but her new income still goes much further now.

"Here I was toiling away in Vermont for almost nothing for 17 years," she says. "When I moved here, I thought, 'This is another world.' How come I didn't know this?"
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