In Canada, they call an adjunct a “sessional.” (Maybe someone will tell us what they call them in Britain and elsewhere.)

The pay can be shockingly low for an adjunct. Figure that any 3-credit course will take at least 12 hours a week for prep and grading and in-the-room teaching. At 15 weeks per semester, that’s 180 hours.

The only way to tear down silos is with new courses teaching new skills. I know this is easier said than done, because there aren’t that many professors ready to teach online journalism, but we are getting there.

An off topic question: What kind of degree does the average adjunct need to have? I’m thinking about getting into teaching at some point as an adjunct.

talk about silos.

When we advertise a position, e.g. “assistant professor of journalism,” we expect to get applications from people who have just completed a Ph.D. degree. We expect to see a few years of real, full-time, professional experience on the person’s c.v. However, a lot of applicants are only about 28 years old and have no real experience at all. They list stuff like their internship or their work on the student newspaper when they were an undergrad.

Depending on the caliber of the journalism school, that kind of applicant might get hired. A j-school with a very good reputation typically would not hire such a person. I am speaking very broadly, of course. Sometimes there are specific reasons to hire someone like that; for example, he or she might have a fantastic research agenda that the j-school would like to grab.

Very, very few applicants have any multimedia skills or multimedia experience in any kind of professional context.

In my experience, some existing journalism professors are learning new skills, and teaching them. However, I would have to say the majority are not.

I have to agree with you that in many undergrad and graduate programs, many of the professors with a Ph.D. lack either industry experience or up-to-date skills.

In some j-schools, the skills classes are taught by people with position called “lecturer” or “assistant” — rather than professor — and these people usually do have recent on-the-job journalism experience.

In a number of j-schools, you can find a wide range of faculty skills and newsroom experience. Usually you can check out the professor’s background on the faculty bio page, so I would say the students can choose wisely if they do their research before signing up for a class.

From your perspective, are there many Ph.D.s with online chops available for the jobs in which they’re needed? Or are the existing professors learning new skills, and researching new topics, to fill the gap (or both)?

It’s been my observation that both my undergrad and graduate programs are lacking professors with either the industry experience, or learned skills, AND a Ph.D.