Adjuncting is a job where the pros can be easily outweighed by the cons: the heavy workload, the student-loan debt, the lack of job security or benefits (the list goes on).
Thank goodness for that trusty $100,000 paycheck.
Well, at least according to one website.
The online hiring dashboard ZipRecruiter’s laughably improbable list of the 25 “Highest Paying Higher Education Jobs in 2023” sent academics across the country scoffing this week. Its vast overestimation of pay for instructional faculty, plus an enigmatic depreciation of the average salary for senior administrators, left even the most opinionated scholars at a loss for words on social media.
Perhaps the most egregious notion was that adjunct professors — widely considered to be underpaid — make as much as $146,000 a year. In reality, a quarter of adjuncts surveyed by the American Federation of Teachers in a report released last year said they earned less than $25,000 a year, and over half reported making less than $50,000. A fifth couldn’t cover monthly expenses.
Claire Walsh, a spokesperson for ZipRecruiter, said in an email to The Chronicle the list was created using an algorithm that scrapes salary estimates for other jobs with “corresponding titles” based on data provided by employers.
“But as disclosed on our site, actual compensation can vary considerably,” she said.
In recent days the list has become a source of wry satire in the academic community. But it also illustrates something larger: the failure fated to those who try to make sense of the chaos of pay levels in academe, where two different institutions can be worlds apart even if they assign their employees similar titles.
“Even among people who work within the sector, we make assumptions and get a lot of things wrong about what people are paid,” said Kevin R. McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, in an email. “This is partly institutions’ fault because they aren’t known for being transparent about salaries.”
‘Insane’
McClure initially took to LinkedIn to chide the list, which he stumbled upon while doing research for an upcoming book. That’s how Jeff Elwell, the interim associate provost at the University of Baltimore, saw the numbers on his feed.
His take? They’re “insane.” And they’re not just janky at the bottom of the totem pole, he said. ZipRecruiter claims college presidents can make between $172,000 and $250,000 a year. Elwell, who was the chancellor and president of Eastern New Mexico University from 2017 to 2020, said not only was he making more than that top figure by his third year on the job, “there are literally hundreds who make in excess of $250,000.”
There’s an awful lot of confusion and misunderstanding about higher-ed jobs and salaries.
In fact, $250,000 is about the median pay for presidents at baccalaureate-level institutions, and salaries can shoot much higher at doctoral institutions, where leaders make the most on average. At colleges with the largest endowments, presidents can take home millions.
“Ridiculous” was the word Elwell used for the listed salaries of other senior administrators such as deans and provosts (both roles he’s held). A vice president for academic affairs, according to ZipRecruiter, could make up to $160,000. Elwell said he knows people who make twice that.
“If I took anything more from the page than a laugh, it was that there’s an awful lot of confusion and misunderstanding about higher-ed jobs and salaries,” McClure said.
It’s that lack of clarity that concerns Rebecca Pope-Ruark, the director of faculty professional development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lists like ZipRecruiter’s, she said, don’t do anything to reverse the public’s withering trust in higher ed. Nor do they lessen the burden on scholars like her who have spent years fighting for adjuncts to be paid better.
“Not only is it ludicrous,” she said, “it’s irresponsible.”
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