Some teach night and weekend classes. This is particularly true for teachers at 2-year community colleges or institutions with large enrollments of older students who have full-time jobs or family responsibilities. Most colleges and universities require teachers to work 9 months of the year, which allows them the time to teach additional courses, do research, travel, or pursue nonacademic interests during the summer and school holidays. Colleges and universities usually have funds to support research or other professional development needs of full time faculty, including travel to conferences and research sites.
About 3 out of 10 college and university faculty worked part time in 2004. Some part-timers, known as “adjunct faculty,” have primary jobs outside of academia—in government, private industry, or nonprofit research—and teach “on the side.” Others prefer to work part-time hours or seek full-time jobs but are unable to obtain them due to intense competition for available openings. Some work part time in more than one institution. Some adjunct faculty are not qualified for tenure-track positions because they lack a doctoral degree.
University faculty may experience a conflict between their responsibilities to teach students and the pressure to do research and publish their findings. This may be a particular problem for young faculty seeking advancement in 4-year research universities. Also, recent cutbacks in support workers and the hiring of more part-time faculty have put a greater administrative burden on full-time faculty. Requirements to teach online classes also have added greatly to the workloads of postsecondary teachers. Many find that developing the courses to put online, plus learning how to operate the technology and answering large amounts of e-mail, is very time-consuming.
Graduate TAs usually have flexibility in their work schedules like
college and university faculty, but they also must spend a considerable
amount of time pursuing their own academic coursework and studies. The
number of hours that TAs work varies, depending on their assignments. Work
may be stressful, particularly when assistants are given full responsibility
for teaching a class; however, these types of positions allow graduate
students the opportunity to gain valuable teaching experience. This
experience is especially helpful for those graduate teaching assistants who
seek to become faculty members at colleges and universities after completing
their degree.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition
