Let's change the terminology a bit here. A professor is someone with tenure is on a tenure track. A lecturer is someone who is not. The article isn't talking about professors, which in the USA relies on research, publishing, obtaining grants, and tenure. Yes, a lecturer teaching a low demand subject is going to have a hard time. Just like most positions, there exists a hierarchy. The reason why this doesn't exist for primary and secondary educators is because of unions and that can be argued either way.
Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
121–130 of 278 posts
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#122You would think with so many colleges in existence, that some of them would resist this sort of policy -- are there counter-examples to the trend towards increasing 'adjunctization'?
Also, if the cause of adjunctization is rising administrative costs in colleges -- are there any universities that have figured out that problem? That is, how to prevent a bloated bureaucracy of overpaid administrators?
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate. > Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoen…
> Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate. I argue that it is precisely because of government intervention that these things happen. > As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying f…
> Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to educate people?
Well I don't have to imply you just have to show a few example of a successful world renown university run completely outside the control of a government. There are example of successful higher education institutions controlled and sponsored by governments. Western Europe has those example.
> The fear of failure that universities don't experience now.
Again, can you show one single example of a university outside the control of government that accomplishes and is driven by this mythical fear.
> "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem
Be honest now, have you been reading some Ayn Rand? That is fiction you know that, right?
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#124It 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.
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#125These 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…
Are you sure this is the defense you want to muster? Universities are basically where liberalism/progressivism comes from. It is where it is in its strongest power. Government money everywhere; tuition, research grants, special projects, tax breaks. Administrative staff benevolently administrating massive diversity programs of every kind. 90%+ of the staff are progressives/liberals. Not being progressive/liberal can…
There is a lot of government involvement in American universities, but in weird pseudo-market ways, like grant programs (to institutions) and subsidized loans (to students). They're not a good example of the non-market model, which is much simpler: public universities, funded by tax money, staffed by civil servants, charging no tuition. Some U.S. states had this model through the 1970s, and it worked fine. Parts of Europe still have it, and it works fine, too.
I've been at both American and Danish universities, and the American universities today really do not seem progressive to me. Many professors will claim to be left-ish, sure, but structurally the universities are not run according to a traditional public-service model, and are not internally egalitarian. Their structure, with tons of administrators, large pay differences, odd systems of performance reviews, people job-hopping for pay raises, administrators desperately looking for revenue, etc., reminds me of American corporations more than it reminds me of public service. Just the pay inequality in itself is shocking, more like corporate levels than civil-service levels. An American Dean's salary might be twenty times or more what a PhD student is paid, and professors' salaries might differ by 2-4x even within just the tenure-track segment. In Denmark the entire range from "highest paid professor" to "lowest paid PhD student" is maybe 2.5x, and professors' salaries are on a boring civil-service scale with about 30% variation. This already makes the American environment much more like a company: competitive, hierarchical, not really egalitarian, big focus on revenues (for the institution) and salary/advancement (for the employee).
There are admittedly things the American university model does do well; it's well regarded in research, for example. But one thing it is not, is a straightforward public system along the lines of what a social-democratic government might run. (One might say the same about the healthcare system, for that matter.)
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt executive salaries make up a significant portion of any school's budget. Overpaid non-executive administrators are a much larger cost in aggregate, because there are so many of them.
That's not quite true: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/higher-eds-for-profit-fut... "compensation of a single person like Zimmer now approaches the reported inflation-adjusted $3 million annual operating deficit that ended a community resource benefiting both medical students and trauma patients."
UChicago spent $446M on academic salaries, $889M on staff salaries and $338M on benefits (not broken out into academic vs non-academic) in the the 2011-2012 fiscal year that Zimmer's compensation temporarily spiked to $3M. It is safe to say that over $1B was spent on non-academic salary and benefits (administration), which dwarfs both Zimmer's compensation and the $3M operating deficit.
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not quite true: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/higher-eds-for-profit-fut... "compensation of a single person like Zimmer now approaches the reported inflation-adjusted $3 million annual operating deficit that ended a community resource benefiting both medical students and trauma patients."
UChicago spent $446M on academic salaries, $889M on staff salaries and $338M on benefits (not broken out into academic vs non-academic) in the the 2011-2012 fiscal year that Zimmer's compensation temporarily spiked to $3M. It is safe to say that over $1B was spent on non-academic salary and benefits (administration), which dwarfs both Zimmer's compensation and the $3M operating deficit. http://finserv.uchicago.edu/pd…
Yes, you're correct that Zimmer's compensation is less than the total salaries of every other person employed by the university.
I guess we can argue about the meaning of the word "significant" now.
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#128Earlier 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".
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…
40 hours of work per week!? Eight hours a day, five days a week, for every class?
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#129So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??
Generally, the cost of college tracks inflation. It's where the funding that is changing that makes it appear to increase. 40 years ago state funds paid for most state college costs (hence the name, "state" college"). Now, most states are broke and rapidly withdrawing most of the funding support from their universities, shifting costs to the students.
Administrative staff costs are rising as well, but the tenure track professors are expected to do less and less administrative work, theoretically allowing them to teach more classes. I don't know how much this works though.
Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care
#130dying industry, dying profession.