Most adjunct professors are employees for tax and labor purposes, not independent contractors, because universities usually control how, when, and where the teaching happens. The question of whether adjunct professors are employees or independent contractors turns on the facts of the working relationship rather than the label on the contract, and the answer changes what taxes you owe, what benefits you can claim, and who owns the course you built. With roughly 68 percent of U.S. faculty positions now contingent and non-tenure-track, the classification affects hundreds of thousands of instructors.
The Three Factors the IRS Actually Weighs
The IRS applies a common law test that looks at behavioral control, financial control, and the nature of the relationship. No single factor is decisive, and the school’s label on the arrangement does not control the outcome. Calling someone a contractor in a hiring letter means nothing if the day-to-day reality looks like employment.1Internal Revenue Service. Employee (Common-Law Employee)2Internal Revenue Service. Independent Contractor or Employee Training Materials
Behavioral Control
Behavioral control is usually the most telling category for adjuncts. When a university mandates a specific syllabus, requires a particular textbook, sets your lecture schedule, or dictates on-campus office hours, it is directing how you do your work. That level of oversight points strongly toward employee status.3Internal Revenue Service. Behavioral Control
Training and evaluation shift the analysis further. Orientation on school policies is neutral, but ongoing training in specific grading software, classroom management, or a required teaching method shows the school is managing the details of your performance. An outcome-based evaluation that measures whether students learned is also neutral; an administrator sitting in on lectures to enforce a departmental methodology is not.
An instructor who receives a general course description and then chooses readings, builds materials, sets the pace, and grades on independent judgment looks more like a contractor. Most adjunct arrangements fall somewhere between these poles, and the IRS weighs how much the school’s direction actually shapes classroom behavior.
Financial Control
Financial control asks who bears the economic risk. A school that supplies office space, a computer, projector access, grading software, and library subscriptions is covering the tools of the trade, which is characteristic of employment.4Internal Revenue Service. Financial Control
Payment structure matters too. A flat rate per credit hour or a fixed semester amount, paid on the regular payroll cycle, reads like a salary. True contractors have a real opportunity for profit or loss depending on efficiency and expenses. An adjunct whose pay is fixed no matter how many hours of prep the course requires does not have that opportunity in the IRS’s eyes. An instructor who buys their own research materials, pays unreimbursed conference travel, and markets to multiple institutions is closer to running a small business.
The Nature of the Relationship
The third category looks at continuity and integration. Semester-to-semester contracts that renew over several years create an ongoing expectation that resembles employment. A single guest lecture series with a fixed start and end date does not. Because teaching is the core service a school provides, adjuncts perform work integral to the business, and integral workers are more often employees.
A few smaller signals get overweighted by both sides. Exclusivity clauses that bar you from teaching at competing institutions are of relatively low importance to the IRS; working for a single institution is consistent with either status. Written contracts help the school’s case only if the actual working conditions match the label. Benefit eligibility, when the school offers health coverage, paid leave, or retirement contributions, is a classic marker of employment.
State Law Often Pushes Harder Toward Employee Status
Roughly 33 states apply some version of the ABC test, at least for unemployment insurance. The test presumes every worker is an employee unless the hiring entity proves all three prongs: the worker is free from the school’s direction; the work falls outside the school’s usual course of business; and the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade.
Teaching is unquestionably within a school’s usual course of business, so the second prong is nearly impossible to satisfy for adjunct faculty. Most adjuncts also lack a genuinely independent teaching practice outside the institution. In ABC-test states, adjunct professors are almost always classified as employees regardless of what the contract says.
The Department of Labor, for its part, uses an economic reality test under the Fair Labor Standards Act to decide whether a worker is economically dependent on the hiring entity or in business for themselves.5eCFR. 29 CFR Part 795 – Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act For adjuncts, this analysis usually reaches the same result as the IRS test and controls whether you are entitled to federal minimum wage and overtime protections.
What Changes on Your Paycheck
Employees receive a Form W-2. The school withholds federal income tax and the employee share of Social Security and Medicare: 6.2 percent for Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, totaling 7.65 percent from your pay, with the school paying a matching 7.65 percent on top.6Internal Revenue Service. General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3 (2026) – Section: Box 4 An additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax applies to wages above $200,000, though few adjunct positions reach that threshold.
Contractors who earn $600 or more receive a Form 1099-NEC.7Internal Revenue Service. Am I Required to File a Form 1099 or Other Information Return? Nothing is withheld. You pay the full 15.3 percent self-employment tax (both the employee and employer FICA shares) plus federal and state income taxes, generally through quarterly estimated payments.8Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC Contractor status does open access to Schedule C business deductions and the deduction for half of self-employment tax, which softens the sting of paying both sides of FICA.9Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040)
What Changes in Benefits
Classification affects far more than your tax bill. The dollar value of employee benefits can easily exceed the tax difference.
Health Insurance
Under the Affordable Care Act, large employers (generally 50 or more full-time equivalent employees) must offer health coverage to workers who average at least 30 hours per week. Because adjunct teaching hours are harder to measure than a standard schedule, the IRS lets schools use a look-back measurement period that factors in preparation time and office hours. Adjuncts with a heavy course load may qualify; those teaching one or two sections typically will not.
Retirement
Most colleges offer 403(b) plans. The universal availability rule requires that if any employee can participate, all employees must get the opportunity, though schools may exclude workers who normally work fewer than 20 hours per week (fewer than 1,000 hours in a 12-month period).10Internal Revenue Service. Issue Snapshot – 403(b) Plan – The Universal Availability Requirement A plan cannot exclude workers simply by labeling them adjuncts; the exclusion must rest on actual hours, and once you cross 1,000 hours in any year, you become permanently eligible.
SECURE 2.0 opened a second door. For plan years after December 31, 2024, 403(b) plans subject to ERISA must let long-term part-time employees make elective deferrals if they work at least 500 hours in two consecutive 12-month periods.11Internal Revenue Service. Additional Guidance With Respect to Long-Term Part-Time Employees More adjuncts qualify under this lower threshold than before.
Family and Medical Leave
The Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, but only after 1,250 hours worked for a covered employer in the prior 12 months. Many adjuncts fall short of that threshold and have no federal leave protection even when properly classified as employees.12U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
Unemployment Between Terms
Adjuncts classified as employees sometimes expect unemployment benefits during summer or between semesters. Federal law makes this harder than it sounds. Under the reasonable assurance doctrine, an educational employee cannot receive unemployment compensation between academic terms if they have a contract or reasonable assurance of returning to work in the following term. What counts as reasonable assurance varies by state and has been heavily litigated; a verbal suggestion from a chair that “we’ll probably have something for you in the fall” may or may not qualify. If a state agency denies benefits between terms, you generally have the right to appeal.
Independent contractors have no access to any of these benefits. They buy their own health coverage, set up their own retirement accounts, and have no unemployment or statutory leave protection because the unemployment system is funded through employer payroll taxes that are not paid on contractor earnings.
Who Owns Your Course
Classification also decides who owns the lectures, slides, syllabi, and online modules you build. Under federal copyright law, a work made for hire belongs to the employer. If you are an employee and you develop course materials within the scope of your job, the university owns those materials by default.
Contractors keep ownership of what they create unless a written, signed agreement assigns it to the school as a commissioned work, and copyright law limits which categories of commissioned work even qualify. An employee who builds an innovative online course may have no legal right to take it to another institution, while a contractor who builds the same course might own it outright. Many universities address this through intellectual property policies that grant the school a license for internal use while letting the instructor reuse content in scholarly work and future courses. If your contract is silent, the default rule tied to your classification controls.
What to Do If You Think You Are Misclassified
You have several paths, and they are not mutually exclusive.
You can ask the IRS to decide. Form SS-8 asks the agency to formally determine your worker status; either you or the school can submit it. The process can take months, but the resulting determination letter carries real weight and can trigger reclassification.13Internal Revenue Service. About Form SS-8, Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding
You can pay only the employee share of FICA while you wait. Form 8919, filed with your tax return, lets you report and pay 7.65 percent on wages received as a misclassified contractor instead of the full 15.3 percent self-employment tax.14Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8919, Uncollected Social Security and Medicare Tax on Wages The form requires a reason code, such as having filed Form SS-8 or having received a determination letter.
You can file a wage and hour complaint. If misclassification has cost you overtime or brought your pay below the minimum wage, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division accepts complaints; services are free and confidential, and retaliation is prohibited. You do not need to be a U.S. citizen and you do not need an attorney, though documentation of your hours and pay strengthens the case.15U.S. Department of Labor. Information You Need to File a Complaint
State labor agencies handle their own classification complaints, and many states offer protections beyond federal law. Pursuing an IRS determination and a state-level complaint at the same time is often the strongest approach, because they address different legal consequences of the same underlying misclassification.