Most academics teach in departments that don’t grant phds. They’re at liberal arts Colleges or regional state universities. True that statistically only a small percentage of grad students will go on to have their own PhD students, but that doesn’t mean there are no jobs for the rest.
A billion applicants for 2 full-time faculty jobs, but they’ve always got a billion adjunct openings that pay shit, offer no benefits, and have no job security.
Indeed, and those positions have had semi-legitimate purposes in the past but have now become a treadmill. For instance, they often served as "academic spouse" jobs. I have a friend who had an English degree, and his wife was a high level science professor. Teaching classes wasn't hopelessly taxing, and they kept re-upping his contract year after year. The flexible schedule allowed him to manage their kids.
I used an adjunct job as a stopgap when I was an "academic spouse" too. It was in the EE department at a Big Ten university. I spent my time networking, and one of the other teachers helped me get a permanent job in local industry.
I worked for a household-name-prestigious school (not as an academic) and they essentially used adjuncts for their cash-cow open enrollment classes knowing that people that were passionate and/or wanted to get the big name on their resume would essentially work for free compared to what even full-time non-tenured faculty got. They made a lot of noise about the university “community” and wellness but I guess that didn’t include adjuncts. It wasn’t UPenn, but the conditions are similar:
