Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care • Hacker News Board

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#41

Post by jrochkind1 » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:15 PM UTC

__xtrimsky wrote: post #35

ryen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for these numbers? $100/hr is highly suspect for "students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers".

I had a family member working at the school. She knew all the salaries. I was often asking, and getting heart attacks when crappy teachers were getting paid 300$ /hr.

I've never heard of university teachers being paid per hour, rather than per-class (adjunct) or salaried. How do they account for time spent in course preparation, grading, and communicating with students out of classes?

I am also not familiar with for-profit universities though, which it sounds like maybe yours was?

I am still sort of thinking that something got misunderstood on the way from the family member sneaking peaks at salaries in the office, to you, to us.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#42

Post by programmarchy » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:16 PM UTC

jonhinson wrote: post #28

programmarchy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such little regulation? What about Common Core, and the long history of ineffective state mandates to "improve" the education system? The education system is highly regulated, and nearly entirely state-run (not counting those few who are able to afford private school tuition on top of school taxes or the time to homeschool). Many, if not most, schools in the U.S. resemble prisons. Top-down. Hierarchical. Rigid. Compu…

How is Common Core, a set of standards that can voluntarily be adopted by states, equivalent to regulation?

Sorry, I was thinking about No Child Left Behind, which was an Act of Congress. You're right -- Common Core is implemented differently. From what I know, it was mainly drafted up by testing corporations, but has the support of the Obama administration. Since the federal government has levers and dials it can use (i.e. fines, penalties, withholding grants, etc.) then it seems to me like the end result will be the same.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#43

Post by dccoolgai » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:16 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #11

soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

Meanwhile, Coursera has 677 courses available for free, many of them excellent. You don't get the diploma, but if the diploma is backed by lower-quality classes and grade inflation, that's going to matter less and less.

Thatks where I see huge potential for disruption to higher ed; I think some trusted or recognized source will make a lot of money by offering credentialing... I saw something about 'nanodegrees' from Udacity (or one of those). When the situation reaches the tipping point where it's a signal of mental paucity that you decided to take on 200k of debt for something you could have gotten for a lot less, I wonder what will happen...or how close we are to that point.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#44

Post by nkurz » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:18 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #21

tammer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...

Here are numbers for Duke and Barnard. I have no idea if they are representative, but they have respectively 10% and 5% of their total budget going to administration. The Barnard link has quite a depth of information.

Duke: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-...

Barnard: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_boo...

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#45

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:18 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #34

programmarchy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such little regulation? What about Common Core, and the long history of ineffective state mandates to "improve" the education system? The education system is highly regulated, and nearly entirely state-run (not counting those few who are able to afford private school tuition on top of school taxes or the time to homeschool). Many, if not most, schools in the U.S. resemble prisons. Top-down. Hierarchical. Rigid. Compu…

Just amazing that you and goldfeld are both right - the US education system is at once inadequately designed, and also being sieged by corporate interests as well. Doesn't hurt that some school administrators don't reasonably respond/engage with parents except those who have lawyers, which parents unfortunately engage without trying to engage the school first. Ultimately though, I think the sad state of schools in th…

On one side we have wealth consolidating much faster than the economy is growing, and on the other side we have the military industrial complex sucking up any increase in taxation to bloat its own oppressive bureaucracy, to say nothing of the resolving door between them.

I can't help but get the feeling that a dystopia is congealing around us with no way out politically. A lot of intellectuals have foreseen the ills of unbounded capitalism that are really starting to set in now, but I don't think anyone has proposed a credible solution.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#46

Post by jdreaver » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:19 PM UTC

goldfeld wrote: post #2

These basal, fundamental flaws in the educational system give me pause to awe, and a gut feeling the US is gonna get trampled many times over by the likes of China within some decades. So little regulation and such harsh capitalism is eating its heart out bit by bit. I guess what keeps America bright at this point is a legacy from the past century, that's slowly eroding, and the brain drain sucked chiefly out of Asia…

Such little regulation? Harsh capitalism?

Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. Most university students go to public schools. Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government.

Harsh capitalism would be harsh on the universities who cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for centuries. It would punish universities who don't produce results, instead of giving them students with free loans from the taxpayers. Harsh capitalism would see universities that can't evolve disappear.

I feel like blaming things on capitalism and lack of regulation is so overplayed and fashionable that people can't take a second to think that maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place. Everything the government does right is lauded while everything it does wrong is blamed on "corporate interests" and capitalism.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#47

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:20 PM UTC

__xtrimsky wrote: post #35

ryen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for these numbers? $100/hr is highly suspect for "students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers".

I had a family member working at the school. She knew all the salaries. I was often asking, and getting heart attacks when crappy teachers were getting paid 300$ /hr.

[deleted]

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#48

Post by __xtrimsky » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #41

__xtrimsky wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a family member working at the school. She knew all the salaries. I was often asking, and getting heart attacks when crappy teachers were getting paid 300$ /hr.

I've never heard of university teachers being paid per hour, rather than per-class (adjunct) or salaried. How do they account for time spent in course preparation, grading, and communicating with students out of classes? I am also not familiar with for-profit universities though, which it sounds like maybe yours was? I am still sort of thinking that something got misunderstood on the way from the family member sneaki…

The teachers are being paid by the hour, but it does not account for grading or anything done out of the class. This might be one of the reasons it is so expensive. If a teacher has one class that lasts 8 hours, and is paid 100$ /hr, he will end up with 800$, even if he has to spend 10 extra hours grading everyone.

My university was for profit, as I said it's a french based university. The director owns multiple Lamborghinis (not sure although if it is related to being for profit).

My family member was not sneaking peaks at salaries, she was the one hiring the teachers, signing contracts with the teachers, etc...

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#49

Post by programmarchy » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

briantakita wrote: post #30

programmarchy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such little regulation? What about Common Core, and the long history of ineffective state mandates to "improve" the education system? The education system is highly regulated, and nearly entirely state-run (not counting those few who are able to afford private school tuition on top of school taxes or the time to homeschool). Many, if not most, schools in the U.S. resemble prisons. Top-down. Hierarchical. Rigid. Compu…

> Based on the goals of social obedience and instilling loyalty to the state... Well, I think in those terms our education system is doing quite well. Teacher wages approaching subsistence level is just the next step in the McDonaldization of education. Even the teachers are just another brick in the wall.

Agree with this. Perhaps the silver lining is that it could incentivize educators to opt-out of the state education system in favor of more entrepreneurial avenues? Like, private tutoring, teaching online classes, workshops, apprenticeships, etc.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#50

Post by bsder » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:23 PM UTC

ryen wrote: post #25

__xtrimsky wrote: post #19

At my computer science university (private university with HQ based in France) in downtown San Francisco, teachers were paid between 100$ and 300$ / hr, which I find decent. 100$ was mostly for teachers with not much experience, mostly students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers.

Do you have a source for these numbers? $100/hr is highly suspect for "students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers".

Define "hour". Hour in the classroom? Possibly. Assume a 12 week semester and 6 hours per week. Last time I taught a semester, I got about $5,000, so that is nominally $70 per hour.

However, that doesn't count time answering student questions. That doesn't count office hours. That doesn't count making up homework or tests and grading them.

For me, each class I teach is about 40 hours of work per week. If that is your number, then I got paid about $10 per hour. And I would have been better off at McDonalds as I would have gotten benefits for being full-time.

For those of us who like to teach, this is a Catch-22. It is good for students to have teachers who have been in industry--however, the pay is lousy relative to that same industry. At the same time, I would also be providing cheap labor to the university who should be paying someone a reasonable amount of money.