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
- $5,000
- Middle half of listings (25th–75th)
- $3,300 – $6,781
- Typical range (5th–95th)
- $1,740 – $11,576
- Institutions disclosing pay
- 165
Based on 1,088 listings that disclose per-course pay.
Highest-paying disciplines
Median per course; disciplines with at least 10 disclosed-pay listings.
- Law & Legal Studies$7,363n=10
- Agriculture & Environmental Science$6,387n=14
- Engineering$6,387n=42
- Economics$6,088n=14
- Visual & Fine Arts$6,000n=24
- Sociology$5,500n=17
- Humanities$5,500n=15
- Biology & Life Sciences$5,127n=35
- Communications & Media$5,064n=48
- Mathematics & Statistics$5,000n=33
- Business & Management$5,000n=95
- Accounting & Finance$5,000n=40
Lowest-paying disciplines
- Philosophy & Religion$3,300n=21
- Criminal Justice$3,363n=18
- Social Work$3,803n=18
- Psychology$3,823n=40
- Computer Science & IT$3,825n=39
- English & Writing$3,875n=44
Pay by state
Median per course; states with at least 10 disclosed-pay listings.
- Arizona$12,250n=16
- California$10,912n=122
- Virginia$8,650n=11
- District of Columbia$7,192n=10
- Kansas$6,500n=14
- Minnesota$6,475n=58
- Washington$6,387n=54
- Pennsylvania$6,000n=10
- Massachusetts$6,000n=172
- New York$5,500n=75
- Colorado$5,000n=86
- Maryland$4,500n=16
- Illinois$3,750n=79
- New Hampshire$3,400n=23
- Indiana$3,250n=10
- Texas$3,200n=120
- Georgia$3,075n=39
- New Jersey$2,753n=34
- Florida$2,491n=21
Twelve-month trend
$3,225May 2026
$4,215Jun 2026
$5,000Jul 2026
$4,500Aug 2026
$4,400Sep 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 $5,000 per course:
- 2 courses × 2 terms
- $20,000
- 3 courses × 2 terms
- $30,000
- 4 courses × 3 terms
- $60,000
Before tax, no benefits. Most institutions cap adjuncts below the load that would trigger benefits eligibility.
Postings that quote other units
- Hourly (n=4,006)
- $73 / hour
- Annual (n=2,949)
- $39,060 / 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.