According to the American Association of University Professors, approximately 70 percent of the 1.5 million college and university faculty members in the United States are in non-tenure-track positions, including many part-time adjuncts, who now make up nearly half of all faculty members, and the number has been increasing steadily over the past 40 years. Approximately half of all faculty members last year were adjuncts. In some community colleges, it is as high as 80 percent.

An adjunct professor is a part-time, temporary college or university instructor hired to teach one or more classes, often for a single semester or academic year. They are generally paid by the course. They typically have expertise in their subject but are not required to conduct research, attend staff meetings or publish papers. They are much cheaper for colleges to employ and traditionally receive few if any benefits. (As a former adjunct professor in journalism at Temple University, I can attest to that statement.)

A lifelong Chestnut Hill resident (except for his years away at college) is trying to balance out the scales, however, between adjuncts and their employers. Ian Doyle, 48, founder of the college textbook publishing company, Philadelphia Press, in 2016, has launched his latest venture, Adjunctions, to serve the needs of adjunct professors.

Adjunctions uses technology to connect hiring institutions with qualified adjuncts. “We are on a mission to uplift adjuncts and the institutions they serve,” Doyle told us last week. “Like a dating website, we take into account each participant’s needs, provide access to a broader, more diverse group of candidates and then curate matches, making the recruitment and hiring process more efficient and effective. We live in an era where algorithms match us with doctors, drivers, even dinner reservations, but hiring adjunct professors in higher education is still chaotic, time-consuming and expensive.

“Adjuncts are very valuable but have long been undervalued members of the academic community, especially in Philadelphia where we have more than 30 universities. They are now the backbone of higher education. In Philadelphia, there are nearly 4.5 times as many educational services jobs as other kinds of service positions,” Doyle said.

Doyle, whose mother, Georgia, co-owns the popular Hill store, Artisans on the Avenue, grew up on Summit Street in Chestnut Hill and still lives on the same block. He is divorced and has one son, Alden, 11. He is an entrepreneur specializing in education technology and higher education book publishing who graduated from William Penn Charter High School before receiving his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“I had visited California for a wedding and liked it there and decided to go to college there,” Doyle said. “I had never been to Santa Barbara before, but my college adviser said Santa Barbara was great and that her husband had played golf there. I fell in love with the place.”

Last month, Adjunctions announced a new collaboration with OneHE, a global learning community for higher education based in the United Kingdom. According to Doyle, “This collaboration will expand professional development opportunities and strengthen adjunct career pathways, furthering Adjunctions’ mission to uplift adjuncts and the institutions they serve.”

Doyle says that Adjunctions’ platform empowers institutions to efficiently find, hire and retain top-tier adjuncts while providing educators with greater career opportunities, flexibility and professional growth by simplifying and streamlining the hiring process.

“I am a matchmaker,” Doyle said. “I will match a teacher to a school within 50 miles using AI. It is more modern. Adjuncts don’t have to be driving up and down the New Jersey Turnpike looking for a job. We have a talent pool and are creating a community. And the model is for universities to subsidize adjuncts. Our platform is free for adjuncts. The universities pay an annual fee. The focus is now on Philadelphia, New York and D.C./Maryland, but we hope eventually to conquer the entire U.S.”

According to Dr. Sheena Howard, an author, filmmaker and professor of communication at Rider University in South Jersey, “Administrators juggle last-minute hires; human resources shuffles outdated paper resumes, and every mismatched adjunct risks student satisfaction. Adjunctions cuts recruitment costs and time, expands access to a broader, more diverse talent pool and improves student retention through better instruction.”

For more information, visit adjunctions.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.