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Would you rather hire somebody with experience or a college degree?

Do legitimate colleges ever hire adjunct faculty who are still working on a Master's degree, but have significant work experience?

  • I'm a quick learner, so I started working in my field some years before I started taking classes in it, and for the last decade have worked at world-class institutions and facilities.  Grad-school admissions folk were wowed by my CV, but now I'm short of funds and only one-third of the way to my MSc. This is in the Australian system, so I've finished the GradCertSc and have the GradDiplSc up next, then the MSc. Ten or twenty years ago, for-profit "technical institute" adverts emphasized how their faculty all had "real-world industry experience," and so on. I don't hear that any more, but I'm wondering whether my CV might wow employers at any legitimate school, bricks-and-mortar or online - even a 2-year junior college or community college - enough to get me an adjunct teaching job.  I'm sure for-profit schools or diploma mills would be more lax, but I don't believe in them.

  • Answer:

    Degrees don't mean as much in academia as most people seem to think they do.  Yes, most professors will have a Ph.D., but that's mainly because a Ph.D. is basically intensive training to be a professor.  What really matters is the ability to do the job, and many top schools have had full professors who did not have terminal degrees.  It's rare, of course, but then so is getting a tenure-track job as a Ph.D. As a grad student, I'll routinely get emails about nearby colleges that need someone to teach a course.  I don't think they've ever specified that they want someone with a master's degree in the email. That said, aside from a few specific cases I can't see why you'd want a job as an adjunct professor.  When you work out the actual hours you spend on the job it pays far less than minimum wage, and as far as I can tell it's actually be a negative on your resume -- "Hey, look, I'm willing to work for free!  Please hire me for substantially more money, though."  Moreover, by working as an adjunct, you reduce the demand for tenured professors, meaning that you're hurting your own job prospects down the line assuming you plan to continue in academia. Now there are a few limited circumstances in which I can see an adjunct position being beneficial, namely: You're a full-time high school teacher and a university wants to hire you to teach the same course you already teach at the high school after-hours or online. You've just finished your Ph.D. and didn't have time to apply for academic jobs (which is pretty much a year-long process), so the school you just graduated from keeps you on for a year with a full teaching load so you have time to work the job market without disruption. You're already gainfully employed, and take an adjunct position at a community college that's having trouble finding instructors, regarding it essentially as volunteer work.  This can sometimes be good advertisement for people who do customer-facing work: people might be more comfortable working with an insurance agent if he can say that he also teaches personal finance at the local community college, for instance. I don't know the situation in Australia, but in the U.S. most Ph.D. programs comes with teaching assistantships that grant a full tuition waiver.  That's what you should be looking for.

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Yes. I teach at an AACSB-accredited business school in the United States and have hired at least three adjunct faculty to teach particular courses because of their significant and relevant work experience. Of course, the case for hiring must be made to the Dean and then I myself need to document their status as "professionally qualified" as opposed to "academically qualified." A masters degree credential facilitates this justification but is not necessarily a sine qua non. At the same time, I must not go to the well too many times. The people I have hired without masters were indeed accomplished professionals, with considerable expertise in digital marketing, marketing communications and entrepreneurship.

James Fisher

There are situations in which real-world experience is valued by schools, but they are few. A successful novelist, for example, might get a teaching job without an advanced degree. In some fields, where a shortage of capable faculty exists and the need is desperate, temporary or adjunct teaching positions might be found. If your skills are directed at a specific profession rather than an academic career, this might give you an opportunity. I would not neglect the for-profit schools. The prestige, such as it is, of community colleges -- at least in the US -- is lower than that of the best for-profit institutions, and because they are government bureaucracies, the public schools are far more likely to insist on advanced degrees. There are for-profit schools that demand real-world experience for those being hired to train people for actual employment outside of academe. In the US, it is common for graduate programs to provide financial aid to students -- either fellowships or teaching assistantships, with the former requiring no particular work and the latter requiring either teaching part of a class or assisting a professor with his research and/or teaching. These forms of financial support won't make the graduate student rich, but they do allow survival. That would be the more common way to make money while working on a masters or Ph.D.

F. Dennis Williams

I'm not sure that you should limit your job options at this point if your goal is to make some money to continue your education. For profit colleges will pay you with the same currency as the most prestigious institutions. Without a graduate degree my guess is you would be best off applying to teach remedial courses. I'm not sure how much remedial education occurs in Australia but in general the entry level courses, at least in the states, tend to need instructors because nobody really wants to take these classes.

Selim Jamil

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