For some Boulderites, CU’s expanding presence in our community might be contentious.

But there is no arguing with the fact that CU is one of Boulder’s crown jewels. It has helped draw some of Boulder’s most influential citizens here as students or faculty, it is an essential part of our economy, and it is a prestigious academic feather in our local cap. As an educational institution, it is a world-renowned research university, its faculty boasts five Nobel laureates, and it is often considered one of the best public universities in the country.

It might surprise some, then, to learn that just 28% of undergraduate credits are taught by the well-paid tenure-track faculty, leaving the other 72% of credits to be taught by non-tenure-track faculty.

This overreliance on non-tenure-track faculty is problematic — though maybe not for the reasons you expect.

It has nothing to do with the qualifications of CU’s non-tenure-track faculty; they are highly qualified. What it does have to do with is money.

Far too many of the university’s non-tenure-track faculty are so severely underpaid for their work that they often have to work second jobs to pay the bills. CU’s faculty and the entire student body deserve better.

The fundamental issue here comes down to the education students are entitled to. If the educators that CU is relying on are pinched financially, and if they have to seek a second job, the fact of the matter is, their students might not get the quality of education and attention they deserve. Considering the cost that undergraduate students are paying, this is something the university should be taking very seriously.

According to a recent Camera story, pay for non-tenure-track professors can be as low as $52,000 per year. That means being a professor at CU does not even earn some faculty members Boulder’s living wage, which is the amount necessary to cover a worker’s basic needs and provide financial security.

According to a cost of living calculator from MIT, the living wage for a single-person household in Boulder County is $26.36 an hour, or roughly $55,000 annually. That number nearly doubles if the adult has a child to support.

For other faculty, including lecturers, the picture is even more dire. A full-time teaching load for a lecturer can pay in the range of $40,000 per year.

It is worth noting that in 2025 CU is set to provide a 4% raise for staff and a 4% increase in the merit pool for faculty. Four percent is no small raise, but it won’t bring non-tenure-track faculty anywhere close to a liveable wage. And lecturers aren’t even included in the faculty merit pool.

Knowing the inadequate salaries, it should be no surprise to learn that some of CU’s non-tenure-track faculty wind up taking a second job — or even selling plasma — to support themselves and their families.

“I think it’s very easy for people in general to think that college professors are all well paid and have easy jobs,” Alastair Norcross, a CU Boulder professor and chair of the CU Faculty Council, told the Camera. “And it comes as a shock to many people to hear about someone with a doctorate degree who’s an expert in their field and is teaching students who is also having to resort to selling plasma to make ends meet. I mean, this shouldn’t happen.”

Living so close to precarity is obviously going to affect a teacher’s ability to give their students the education and attention they deserve.

One teaching professor in the Camera’s story acknowledged that he knew he could give his students more if he wasn’t being crushed financially. The hour-and-a-half commute by bus from Broomfield, the second job, trying to take care of his family — it all takes a toll.

“You start to get burnt out after a while, and you can’t give as much as you like to,” the professor said. “I feel like we’re all just trying to make it work, but I know I could be giving them so much more if I had the kind of financial freedom to not work another job.”

These overburdened non-tenure-track faculty teach the vast majority of freshmen and sophomores — the very students who are likely to need an attentive teacher to help them adjust to college life, or to help them find a major that interests them, or to simply prevent them from falling behind.

To be absolutely clear, this is not a critique of the work of CU’s non-tenure-track faculty. They are highly educated and highly qualified teachers. Nor is this argument meant to imply that lower-paid teachers are somehow unable to offer the same quality of education as their high-paid colleagues. Rather, the point here is to highlight the reality that if educators are struggling to get by because their pay is so low, a second job or the well-documented stress of precarity is likely to affect the quality of work, and thus the level of education that students get.

In an email, CU Boulder spokesperson Nicole Mueksch stressed that “CU Boulder is one of the few institutions of higher education that offers health benefits to its temporary faculty.”

And Mueksch provided a statement from the university: “The University of Colorado Boulder works diligently to balance the affordability of a CU Boulder education with the needs of our employees. Our campus recognizes the impact that ensuring attainable access to CU Boulder — which we accomplish via tuition guarantee, modest tuition increases from the Board of Regents and CU Promise — has on our ability to maintain wages that keep with inflationary costs, particularly in a community like Boulder where the cost of living has increased faster than the state and national average.”

It should be obvious that this system needs to change — for the students paying CU’s tuition who deserve the best education possible, for the competent and accomplished educators who deserve to be fairly remunerated for their work, and for basic decency. Educators who give themselves to the service of our community and the betterment of the next generation deserve to earn a livable wage.

Of course, this problem is not unique to CU. According to the American Association of University Professors, 70% of university faculty across the country are adjuncts, most of them without job security, benefits or union representation.

Admittedly, then, such a systemic issue is not one that can be easily fixed. University finances are complicated, and budgets are often tight. But the CU system’s budget is over $6 billion. It seems outlandish that such a massive entity couldn’t make meaningful steps toward fairly remunerating the highly qualified employees who provide the very service the university is selling: an education.

CU is one of Boulder’s most forward-facing entities. It often represents our community on the national and international stage. We can only hope that the Board of Regents takes this issue seriously and makes clear once and for all the value of the education provided on campus — by all levels of faculty.

— Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board