Inside the Adjunct Hunger Games

What no one tells you about the yearly bloodbath of trying to teach in business schools

It’s mercato season again—the annual adjunct scramble for work. From September to June, we teach, mentor, show up early, stay late, hold space for students, and keep classes alive. Then summer hits, and it’s back to zero. No guarantees. No stability. No real shot at building anything long-term.

Most people have no clue how messed up the hiring process is. There’s no pipeline. No visibility. Just an opaque mess of “we’ll let you know” emails, polite ghosting, and last-minute panic hires. Adjuncts are filler—stopgaps while schools bend over backward to keep PhDs happy with reduced teaching loads and bloated research contracts no one reads. We’re the fuses in a system designed to move tuition money from students to faculty lounges and paper-pushers.

But what people don’t know is this: most business schools aren’t looking for passionate educators. They want low-maintenance headcount. Quiet. Compliant. Forget quality—department heads are incentivized by throughput, not transformation. Their KPIs? Graduates who pass, not students who learn.

And the conditions? Laughable. Pay that would make parents cringe. Zero career progression. Collegiality is a fantasy. There’s no support—tech, logistics, student discipline? You're on your own. Your worth? A student survey no one even bothers to quality check. Uberisation at its finest: keep the ratings up or get replaced. No second chances. No conversation. No context.

And yet, somehow, the ones who actually care—who show up with fire, clarity, and a deep sense of purpose—are the ones stuck reapplying for the job every. damn. year.

Meanwhile, in an age of infinite content and automated everything, human teaching matters more. The kind of mentorship, vulgarisation, and fire-in-the-belly motivation that a PhD alone can’t deliver—and that AI never will. The paradox? AI’s actually making me better. It’s handling the grunt work. I get to focus on what matters: connecting with students, pushing their thinking, building something real in the classroom.

So yeah, I’m looking for my next gigs. But let’s be clear: I’m not here to be quiet or compliant. I’m looking for bold schools with the guts to treat teaching like it matters. If you're still coasting on brand and metrics—keep scrolling. If you're ready to put students and substance first—let’s talk.