How much do adjuncts get paid?

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We read the pay in 21,235 college teaching job postings and checked the published pay rates of 234 colleges.

This is the October 2026 Edition. See the latest report.

$1,000adjunct pay per credit hour
(430 colleges, 4,818 postings)

$3,038adjunct pay per course, where colleges post it that way
(232 colleges, 1,195 postings)

$35.00adjunct pay per hour
(780 colleges, 7,856 postings)

$67,652full-time faculty salary
(956 colleges, 5,060 postings)

Adjuncts are not all paid the same way. Colleges post adjunct pay in different units: per credit hour, per course, per hour in class, and at some colleges per student enrolled. The same course can be posted one way at one college and another way at the next, so we show each one separately, the way the college wrote it, and never convert one into another.

Typical (median) pay with each college counted once, so a college that posts hundreds of jobs at one rate cannot tip the number. Each posting counts at the starting (lowest) pay it lists. Medical school clinical faculty are counted apart: $210,212 median salary across 547 postings.

Supplement your income by teaching accelerated courses online

$3,038typical adjunct pay per course

$18,225per year: one 8-week online course at a time, at one college

$36,450per year: one course at a time at each of two colleges

Many colleges run online courses in 8-week terms, so a year holds about 6 of them. Teaching one course at a time at one college comes to about 6 courses per year: 6 × $3,038 = $18,225. Teach one at a time at two colleges, and it comes to about $36,450.

Accelerated courses usually pay the same as full-term ones. An 8-week course often carries the same credit hours, and the same pay, as a 16-week course. Accelerated courses also start more often, so there are more chances each year to be hired.

What makes the workload manageable:

Grade a little every day. Accelerated courses move fast, so a short session each day keeps the grading from piling up at the deadline.
Keep a comment bank. Save the feedback you write most often, and adapt it for each student instead of starting from scratch.
Teach the same course again. The second time through, your announcements, lectures, and answers to common questions are already written.
Use auto-graded quizzes. Let the course grade the quizzes, so your time goes to discussions and papers.

These are examples built from the typical posted pay per course, not a promise of what any one person earns. Pay varies by college, discipline, and course length, and some colleges limit how many courses an adjunct may teach at once.

Pay by state and discipline

A dash (—) means there is not enough data to calculate this number.

Online or on campus: Does it pay differently?

$1,000Online: adjunct pay per credit hour
(237 colleges, 2,478 postings)

$1,050On campus: adjunct pay per credit hour
(185 colleges, 999 postings)

$1,092Not said: adjunct pay per credit hour
(148 colleges, 1,120 postings)

What we found: Across all colleges, the typical online rate was $1,000 per credit hour and the typical on-campus rate was $1,050. But most colleges pay the same either way. Of the 126 colleges that posted both online and on-campus jobs per credit hour, 90 paid the same rate for both, 20 paid less online, and 16 paid more online. So the difference comes mostly from which colleges are hiring online, not from colleges paying online teaching less.

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Where these numbers come from

How we collected them

The Adjunct Alert reads the job boards of thousands of colleges every day. This report uses every teaching job posting that was open on October 31, 2026 and printed its pay in the posting itself. We do not use surveys or self-reported pay: Every number is what a college wrote in its own job posting or on its own website, and we keep the source of every figure.

A posting counts only when a pay word (salary, pay, compensation, rate, hiring range) sits right beside the dollar amount, so figures about benefits, tuition, grants, retirement limits, or fundraising are left out.

How to read the numbers

Pay is shown the way each college states it: per credit hour, per course, per hour, or per year. We do not convert one into another. Per hour often means per hour in class, and colleges count those hours differently. A range like “$1,050 – $1,350 per credit hour” counts at its starting figure, $1,050. These are posted rates, not what any one person earned.

What this report does not cover

Postings that do not print pay, which is most of them. Colleges that publish pay scales on their HR pages instead of in each posting. Pay offered privately after an interview.

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