Adjunct nursing professor pay per course
From real nursing adjunct and lecturer postings across U.S. colleges and universities, refreshed daily. Live and recently closed listings both count.
- Median per course · nursing
- $3,000
- Middle half of listings (25th–75th)
- $1,200 – $5,500
- Typical range (5th–95th)
- $850 – $9,000
- Institutions disclosing pay
- 109
Based on 301 listings that disclose per-course pay.
Highest-paying institutions
Median per course among institutions with at least three disclosed-pay nursing listings.
- California State University-Los Angeles$15,211n=4
- Samuel Merritt University$8,000n=12
- University of New Hampshire$7,500n=3
- Radford University$7,250n=3
- Western New England University$7,000n=3
- University of the Pacific$7,000n=3
- Brandeis University$6,573n=3
- Augsburg University$6,475n=7
- Edmonds College$6,387n=6
- SUNY Brockport$5,500n=4
- Excelsior University$5,000n=13
By state
States with at least five disclosed-pay nursing listings.
- California$8,000n=38
- New Hampshire$6,750n=6
- Minnesota$6,475n=11
- Washington$6,387n=8
- Virginia$5,625n=6
- New York$4,623n=33
- Massachusetts$3,870n=30
- Texas$3,000n=28
- Florida$2,000n=19
- Illinois$1,257n=43
- New Jersey$1,250n=5
- Maryland$1,203n=6
- Nevada$1,038n=6
- Ohio$942n=24
Twelve-month trend
$4,200Nov 2025
$5,000Dec 2025
$2,488Jan 2026
$670Feb 2026
$5,500Mar 2026
$3,500Apr 2026
$942May 2026
$3,125Jun 2026
$1,326Jul 2026
$3,900Aug 2026
$3,075Sep 2026
$2,283Oct 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 $3,000 per course:
- 2 courses × 2 terms
- $12,000
- 3 courses × 2 terms
- $18,000
- 4 courses × 3 terms
- $36,000
Before tax, no benefits. Most institutions cap adjuncts below the load that would trigger benefits eligibility.
Frequently asked questions
- How much do adjunct nursing professors make per course?
- Across 301 nursing adjunct postings that disclose pay, the median is $3,000 per course; the middle half of listings fall between $1,200 and $5,500.
- Do online adjunct nursing jobs pay less?
- Online nursing listings show a median of $4,700 per course against $3,000 overall (from 12 online postings with disclosed pay). Institutions usually pay online and in-person sections at the same rate; the gap reflects which institutions hire online.
- What would that be per year?
- At the $3,000 median, three courses a term over two terms is about $18,000 before tax, with no benefits. Loads are usually capped below the level that would trigger benefits eligibility.
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.