Cracking the whip

I was watching the local news recently and one of the stories being discussed was the friction between full time faculty and adjunct faculty. The adjunct faculty thought they were underpaid for the work they did, while the full time faculty and administration's stance was that adjuncting was not meant to be "full time work". Well when many universities use mainly adjuncts to teach their students I beg to differ, but that was not what really got my goat.

In this segment they were discussing the pay for adjuncts which has not rose to meet the rate of inflation for years. They also discussed how the pay was a mere $3000 per class. That almost made me choke. $3000 per class? I get a fraction of that!

This is where I began to break it down, most three credit classes meet for one hour a day, three days a week. That is 3 hours of work. Most f2f prof's have one hour of office time. That is 4 hours per week. Let's assume that the other 4 hours is for grading and prep. That would be 8 hours.

I get paid less that $1500 for eight hours of work per week per class. I "go to class" five days a week, am available 24 hours by email to answer questions. In addition to the hours needed to grade the discussion assignments I also grade papers and quizzes. I am sure that I work more than 8 hours a week, so why I am I getting paid less than half of the face to face adjuncts when our work loads appear to even out?