Class ends. College students finish off and head back with their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, would go to her car . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before generating across the city to another university to teach another, wholly different course. All to get a salary that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches least wage.

Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college teacher has been absolutely about The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission transformed-for the worse. America’s colleges and universities were made to serve students and generate understanding through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but advanced schooling today is normally dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only 30 % of faculty held short-term or part-time positions. By 2011, as colleges faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that amount topped 50 percent. Right now, some surveys suggest that as much as 70 % of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no protection, and intensely low pay.

In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of various other adjuncts to tell the story of how advanced schooling reached this sorry state.