Many of them can no longer afford to pay their rent. How many more times must it be repeated that the modest adjunct lecturers at Malagasy universities are trapped in a precariousness that has become almost institutional? Yet they remain. They work throughout the year so that the children of the people might one day become the pride of the Nation. It has been four years since they were last seen brandishing placards and banners. Still, their demand was disarmingly simple: to receive their overdue salaries within a reasonable timeframe. Already, these devoted scholars had received only a portion of what was owed to them. Then silence descended, that administrative language whose subtleties successive governments seem to know thoroughly.

In early 2026, a ministerial decree set their hourly rate at 25,000 ariary. An announcement that brought relief. Shortly after, a promise came to fuel hopes: "Adjunct teachers will be paid in full before the national holiday," it was stated. Unfortunately, this glimmer of optimism quickly faded when the majority learned that the rate had ultimately been reduced to 6,000 ariary. These soldiers of chalk and whiteboard await their just compensation. While graduates of ENS and ENSET launch into a series of strikes to secure positions in the civil service, they continue their mission with desperately meager wallets. Meanwhile, unpaid bills and estimates for their children's school fees accumulate on the old living room table. They too hope to be hired. They do not wish to take the confrontational path of their bolder younger colleagues, fearing they might be excluded from the University. Must it really be repeated? These "external contributors," who must serve the Nation through knowledge, often prepare their lessons in the darkness of power cuts. Dressed in rags, wearing shoes that the rainy season transforms into sieves, they nonetheless continue to fulfill their... ungrateful duties. Headaches caused by heat, persistent migraines, stomachs crying out for food, legs weighed down by long walks: none of this prevents them from going to their posts. They know that transmitting their knowledge is both duty, responsibility, and genuine vocation. "I wake up at three-thirty to prepare my lessons. At five, I have breakfast. I leave home at 5:30 and cross five neighborhoods before reaching the university. In the afternoon, I don't go home because my classes resume at 1:30 p.m. So I sit in a modest food stall, where I have soup for 1,000 ariary. That is my daily life," confides a young assistant in higher education and research who prefers to remain anonymous.

To this already unenviable situation is added the constant demand for quality. How can one meet this expectation when payment arrives years late? Thus, it is not surprising that several seek additional work to support their households. "I chose to give evening classes to final-year students. That is where I make my living. But the income remains low because the parents themselves struggle to pay all the fees. I understand them. It is better to receive a small sum immediately than to wait indefinitely for arrears that the State might perhaps one day agree to pay," explains Armelo R.

These adjuncts do much for a modest sum and are often treated with disconcerting indifference. Some tenured colleagues, students look down on them as if they belonged to a separate category. They have become the invisible workers of intelligence, of collective imagination. It must be acknowledged that for ten years, higher education in the Great Island has not been quite what it once was. Lecture halls, classrooms, administrative offices: everything seems bathed in a heavy atmosphere. Faces are marked by exhaustion and discouragement. Long ago, serenity fled these places, giving way to tension and daily anxieties. Then, back home, their bodies demand their due. Muscles contract in pain, cramps traverse them slowly, like rats running through an empty pipe. It is an inelegant image, certainly, but doubtless less shocking than the reality it describes.