You are correct to do so.
To begin with, their “Adjunct Career Paths” is so obviously taken from other professions that it is ridiculous. The actual Adjunct career paths:
A. Adjunct - Leave academia - join other career trajectory
B. Adjunct - non-TT FT lecturer - non-TT FT Senior lecturer - retirement
C. Adjunct - TT position - Associate Professor - Full professor (maybe) - retirement
D. Adjunct - get non-faculty job at university - different career path
E. Whatever the actual career trajectory happens to be (lawyer, architect, planner, etc)
F. Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Adjunct - Die in poverty
Also, their academic trajectories yet again demonstrate the deep and profound ignorance of all things related to academia.
In general, people have this idea that "they have lots of DATA, so they must be correct. I don’t know where their data is from, but I can say, with certainty, that it’s garbage.
Then there is the claim that “The average Adjunct Faculty salary in the United States is $83,069 per year or $40 per hour.”
BZZZZZT. Wrong again, Zippia.
According to AAUP, “In 2020–21, average pay for adjunct faculty members to teach a course section ranged from $2,979 in public associate’s institutions without ranks to $5,557 in public doctoral institutions.”
A full time teaching load is 6 courses a year. In extreme cases it is 12. That would mean that the average pay for an adjunct, who was FT (has not been found in the wild) would be paid $35,748 a year at public associate’s institutions, and $66,684 if they were working at a public doctoral institution. For these faculty earn “$83,069 per year” they would have to teach 15 classes a year at a public doctoral institution, or 28 courses a year at a public doctoral institution.
The academic rule of thumb is that you spend around 3+ hours working per hour frontal teaching. So the standard 3 weekly hour course means 10 hours of work for the professor. That includes office hours, preparing the course, grading (most adjuncts do not have TAs), creating homework and exams. A semester is 15 weeks, so each course is around 150 hours spent per course. That means that the hourly pay of an adjunct is $19 an hour at public associate’s institutions, and $37 if they were working at a public doctoral institution. That would NOT result in a general average of $40.
So, once again, Zippia is either making their data up, or taking the salaries of the highest paid adjuncts and claiming that these are the averages of all adjuncts
Moreover, their abysmal ignorance of the subject is laid bare by the fact that adjuncts are paid by course, not by hours, nor by year. The entire idea that you can look at adjunct salaries as “what do adjunct make in a year” is ludicrous. It changes year to year, depending on what courses are available, and where they are available.
It is practically impossible for an adjunct to get 5 courses per semester at the same university. They usually teach a a few universities, and the time that travel, etc., takes makes teaching 5 classes per semester almost impossible.
Adjuncts are part time by definition, and they give the average salary of part-time job as though it were full time. Again they are totally ignorant of academia as a whole, and adjuncts in particular.
That article is not worth th eelectrons used to create it and maintain it.
I reads like it was written by AI, and I would guess that the entire article, including the numbers, are produced by AI. It is a classic case of GIGO.
More proof that their data is bunk.
According to people who actually show where their data comes from, around 1/3 have PhD, and the great majority of the rest have masters, sume of the terminal masters (like MFA). Only around 5% have a BA or BS.
Sorry, but, as far as can tell, Zippia is pulling their data from their nether regions.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1846&context=jcba