In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich published “Nickel and Dimed”, the New York Times best-seller that focused much-needed attention on the plight of the “millions of Americans who work full-time, year-round for poverty level wages…(in) a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival.”

But how many Americans know that that land is also home to the ivy-covered halls of academe? Do parents paying tuitions of $30,000 a year or more realize that some of the people teaching their children receive less than minimum wage with no benefits, job security, or fair treatment from their college and university employers? That part-time and even full-time adjunct professors, some of the most highly educated professionals in our society, are routinely paid even less than the university housekeeping and food service staffs whose fight for fair employment practices Ehrenreich has inspired many to champion?

Almost all American colleges and universities employ adjunct faculty. These are people who are hired to teach anything from the occasional course to adjuncts who teach for years on a full-time basis. However, most earn a per course salary that is less than one-quarter of what their tenured or tenure-track colleagues are paid. Add to that the fact that adjuncts receive no health benefits or perks such as the tuition remission for family members available to other employees and the savings advantage for institutions of higher learning becomes obvious.

Colleges are looking for ways to save. Higher education has become big business, and as in other businesses, the disparity between administrative and other salaries has skyrocketed. More and more young people are attending colleges and universities, which have expanded to meet market demand. But many universities have over-expanded, and now are desperate to attract students to fill their ever-growing capacity. As they compete for applicants, they add “sexy” facilities like coffee shops, state-of-the-art gyms, and shuttle buses to shopping malls and local attractions. Saving money by paying professors significantly less than the shuttle bus driver earns can go a long way toward financing a competitive advantage.

Providing education is the primary function of a college or university. Yet today, those institutions increasingly slash the amount of their budgets that pays for educators. We so often hear the valid complaint that elementary and secondary teachers are underpaid, but the public’s knowledge of academic salaries is small compared to its awareness of what schoolteachers earn. How many people realize that the vast majority of tenured and tenure-track professors earn more or less the same amount as schoolteachers, and consistently receive fewer benefits? Even fewer know that the growing percentage of professors who are adjuncts are not paid even a living wage.

Employing qualified teachers with little to no chance of advancement at poverty-level wages to save a buck is in direct opposition to the social values taught to students by the academy. These students are for the most part unaware that their professor may be making less to teach a course than they paid to take it–so an adjunct teaching a class of fifty nets their employer fifty times what they are paid. In fact, even when pro-rated to reflect a full teaching load, an adjunct’s yearly salary is more often than not just a fraction of a student’s yearly tuition.

Ehrenreich wryly notes that “It’s hard (for students) to concentrate in classrooms that were cleaned during the night by people who can barely make rent.” Would knowing they are being taught by people who can barely make rent make it even harder?

Imagine how hard it is for a professor trying to teach the value of social equity for poverty-level pay.