Salary explorer
What adjunct professors are actually paid per course
Not survey averages: the pay stated in real adjunct and lecturer job postings, tracked daily across 4,000+ U.S. colleges and universities. Explore by discipline, state, and institution.
- Median per course · all disciplines
- $3,500
- Middle half of listings (25th–75th)
- $1,469 – $6,387
- Typical range (5th–95th)
- $850 – $13,420
- Institutions disclosing pay
- 266
Based on 2,442 listings that disclose per-course pay.
Highest-paying disciplines
Median per course; disciplines with at least 10 disclosed-pay listings.
- Engineering$5,250n=96
- Accounting & Finance$4,700n=65
- Humanities$4,500n=67
- Business & Management$4,000n=215
- Communications & Media$3,750n=109
- Education & Teaching$3,728n=118
- Political Science$3,700n=41
- Social Work$3,600n=47
- Psychology$3,513n=87
- Economics$3,500n=35
- Agriculture & Environmental Science$3,500n=56
- Biology & Life Sciences$3,500n=113
Lowest-paying disciplines
- Trades & Applied Technology$1,124n=79
- Health Sciences & Nursing$3,038n=302
- World Languages$3,075n=129
- Music & Performing Arts$3,075n=105
- English & Writing$3,088n=98
- Sociology$3,108n=61
Pay by state
Median per course; states with at least 10 disclosed-pay listings.
- California$9,552n=331
- District of Columbia$6,531n=12
- Kansas$6,500n=15
- Minnesota$6,475n=70
- Washington$6,387n=71
- Massachusetts$6,000n=303
- Virginia$5,358n=36
- Pennsylvania$5,000n=18
- Colorado$5,000n=105
- New York$5,000n=156
- Maryland$4,000n=40
- Indiana$4,000n=23
- New Hampshire$3,400n=33
- Georgia$3,075n=42
- Kentucky$3,000n=19
- Texas$2,850n=260
- Louisiana$2,500n=21
- Florida$2,491n=119
- New Jersey$2,225n=90
- Illinois$1,400n=285
- Nevada$1,150n=57
- Michigan$1,141n=32
- Ohio$942n=105
- Arizona$870n=50
- Oregon$750n=15
Twelve-month trend
$2,990Oct 2025
$3,735Nov 2025
$4,500Dec 2025
$2,491Jan 2026
$2,491Feb 2026
$7,562Mar 2026
$3,500Apr 2026
$1,174May 2026
$4,266Jun 2026
$3,513Jul 2026
$3,302Aug 2026
$3,500Sep 2026
$3,750Oct 2026
Median per-course pay of listings posted each month.
What the median means per year
Adjuncts are paid per course, so annual income depends on load. At $3,500 per course:
- 2 courses × 2 terms
- $14,000
- 3 courses × 2 terms
- $21,000
- 4 courses × 3 terms
- $42,000
Before tax, no benefits. Most institutions cap adjuncts below the load that would trigger benefits eligibility.
Postings that quote other units
- Hourly (n=5,074)
- $72 / hour
- Annual (n=1,608)
- $50,000 / year
Reported as posted; never converted to per-course figures.
Pay by subject
- Adjunct psychology pay
- Adjunct social work pay
- Adjunct criminal justice pay
- Adjunct business pay
- Adjunct marketing pay
- Adjunct accounting pay
- Adjunct english pay
- Adjunct law pay
- Adjunct nursing pay
- Adjunct education pay
- Adjunct history pay
- Adjunct computer science pay
- Adjunct economics pay
- Adjunct sociology pay
- Adjunct mathematics pay
Where these numbers come from
- Every figure is computed from adjunct, lecturer, and part-time faculty postings that OpenLecture tracks across 4,000+ U.S. institutions, refreshed daily. Closed listings stay in the sample, so the picture covers roughly the past year.
- Only postings that state a per-course amount are compared. Hourly and annual quotes are reported separately and never converted.
- Where a range is posted, the top of the range is used. Figures below $500 or above $25,000 per course are excluded as mislabelled periods.
- Medians are shown, not averages, so a handful of outliers cannot move them. Pages with fewer than 25 disclosed-pay listings carry a warning.
- Roughly a quarter of adjunct postings disclose pay at all; these numbers describe the institutions that do.