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

guernicamag.com

141–150 of 278 posts

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

#141
post #91
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out what may not be so obvious... a lot of the administrative and non instructional staff are not what many of us would consider to be "management". For instance, at the University of Wisconsin, there is an VERY large, extremely expensive bureaucracy called DoIT. It stands for "Division of Information Technology". Basically... it is the department for all of the IT people at the University. It is enormo…

I worked at DoIT before graduating and moving out to the Bay Area. And your characterization regarding its bureaucracy and efficiency are pretty spot on.

It's funny that DoIT comes up because I happen to work in the same building. I generally leave around 5:00 and without fail when I open my office door the lights are out because people rolled out so long ago that the system shut them off due to lack of activity. Either everyone gets to work at about 7:30am or nobody has ever worked an eight hour day this year.

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

#142
post #116

This just means that college teachers in certain cases are in high supply.

One of the callout quotes from the article:

    Of course it’s possible to love what one does, be good at it, and still be exploited.
A job that people love, with a glut of qualified people. "I always dreamed of being a professor."

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

#143
>Some of these contingent employees are full-time lecturers, and many are adjunct instructors: part-time employees, paid per class, often without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is a relatively new phenomenon: in 1969, 78 percent of professors held tenure-track positions. By 2009 this percentage had shrunk to 33.5.

Would be interesting to know if college prices began rising at a higher ratio to the CPI around this time.

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

#144
post #137
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw examples like this over and over when I worked with Government, and it's ultimately what pushed me to embrace libertarianism. Government usually has great intentions, but those intentions are often overwhelmed by the perverse micro incentives of the human beings, driven by basic human nature, who run everything at the ground level.

Last I checked, most colleges were private institutions, and the public ones (state schools and community colleges) tended, in general, to be a lot more frugal (and cheaper, and more cost-effective) than private ones.

My guess as to why that might be is because there seems to be a trend of expenses of institutions expanding to their budgets, private institutions (especially the glamorous ones) have big budgets. Presumably the perverse incentives problem occurs to all moderately large institutions, but the budgets of less well funded institutions have less room to grow.

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

#145
post #92

It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going. Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanni…

Question: Is a typical adjunct professor qualified to teach in a public school? And related, would they want to if they could?

I teach overseas, and I would never qualify to teach in an American school -- I have a college degree, and some teaching experience (from when I was in college), but no teaching credential.

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

#146
post #124
post #92

It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going. Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanni…

I saw examples like this over and over when I worked with Government, and it's ultimately what pushed me to embrace libertarianism. Government usually has great intentions, but those intentions are often overwhelmed by the perverse micro incentives of the human beings, driven by basic human nature, who run everything at the ground level.

But it is precisely that inescapable fact --that perverse micro-incentives at the individual level, driven by basic human nature, run everything at the ground level-- that often creates the need for institutions like government in the first place! Whenever there are tragedy-of-the-commons like externalities / collective action problems, in many cases it is provably superior to have even highly deficient government-like institutions than fully unconstrained individual action[1].

Think, for instance, any of today's failed states to see what total lack of basic governance actually looks like.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

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

#148
post #92

It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going. Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanni…

Yes. I worked for a university briefly as a staff member. Our university sung far and wide about how it just raised $400 million for its endowment in its most recent fundraising campaign, and yet, it couldn't afford to pay me more than a $25,000 salary in the IT department. How on earth is this possible? It's probably in all the unseen costs they pay out in contracts to subcontractors. But another clue might be this:…

I imagine that they pay what they have to in order to fill the number of positions they need filled. How could they pay anything less than the market rate and still fill the positions?

I guess a revolving door supply of cheap labor is what lets them fill an IT position while only offering $25k. You said you worked there briefly, I assume you found a better job and moved on.

Clearly the product is not the problem with enrollment meeting quota and certainly no downward pressure on tuition cost... I say that tongue in cheek -- this is the university's (business') perspective.

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

#149
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research, Sports, executive salaries. There are a lot of costs besides teacher's salaries.

I thought sports were mainly profit centers.

Not usually. Most colleges don't have popular enough teams to turn a profit. And at the ones that do most of the profit ends up being spent on the sports teams (popular teams need big, modern, expensive stadiums). Almost no money flows from sports to education. At best there's an argument that sports helps drive enrollment and helps drive alumni donations. Though even then because of the cost of most sports programs it's questionable whether or not they break even on average.

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

#150
post #124
post #92

It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going. Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanni…

I saw examples like this over and over when I worked with Government, and it's ultimately what pushed me to embrace libertarianism. Government usually has great intentions, but those intentions are often overwhelmed by the perverse micro incentives of the human beings, driven by basic human nature, who run everything at the ground level.

Smaller governments (i.e. less power, shallower hierarchies), good voting systems, and an informed public are the answer; not avoiding government altogether.

Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property) doesn't work, because the markets don't reflect negative externalities like pollution, over-harvesting, misinformation, or antibiotics misuse. States need to exist to manipulate markets to reflect those things.

There are many industries where the profit motive is contrary to the public interest, like education, health, media, banking, prisons, military, drugs, junk food, gambling, etc. Either [a] the state should be the sole player in the industry (prisons, military), [b] the state should provide a public service in that industry to set a baseline for private competitors (education, health, media), [c] the state should impose regulations/taxation that prevent/discourage activity contrary to the public interest (banking, junk food, drugs), or [d] the state should outlaw the industry entirely (gambling (IMHO)).

There are many "markets" that are inherently monopolistic, or where private competition is nonsensical, like public spaces (parks, lakes, rivers) and public infrastructure (roads, telecoms, trains, airports).

Companies and markets are only good at medium-term thinking (at best). Google employees avoid thinking about the kind of society they're creating for their grandchildren, but that's the job description of elected representatives (in accountable governments).

Finally, but most significantly, there's that whole thing about capital accumulating to the top. Income and capital gains taxation is in the public interest, because equality and a well-financed state is in the public interest.

I feel like many Americans tend towards libertarianism because they feel that their governments are unaccountable, unrepresentative and corrupt. I think the problem in the US is the size and power of its government - not the concept of government itself. I think the federation of the US should be abolished (as in, all federal law). States could sign up to federal institutions/programs (central bank, defense, immigration, ...) when and how they please.

Personally, I think any moderately-populated area should have a single level of government spanning no further than 2-4 km from its parliament (i.e. within walking distance). Each of these states can assume common administration of adjacent sparsely-populated areas. If the states agree to a common legislative process, there's no duplication of effort in passing common legislation, except for each parliament voting on it or amending it as they want, which is democratic!

Libertarianism really grates me, but I enjoy debating it because I see that libertarians want the same things I do: liberty and equality for everyone.

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