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

#21

Post by jjoonathan » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

tammer wrote: post #17

soup10 wrote: post #4

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

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...

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

#22

Post by ryguytilidie » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

soup10 wrote: post #4

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

Isn't this the same as most businesses? The price of good is going up, salaries are stagnant or falling. Where is all of this extra profit going?

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

#23

Post by Avshalom » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:50 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.

And we don't have to pay any teachers.

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

#24

Post by programmarchy » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:52 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? 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. Compulsory.

And if you look at the history of the state education system, it was largely modeled after the Prussian education system, set up by the king, which "attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through indoctrination [...] The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy." [1] And I would argue that the school system serves a similar function today.

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.

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

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

#25

Post by ryen » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

__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".

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

#26

Post by nmrm » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

xrange wrote: post #18

>“The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, ‘She was a professor?’ I said yes. The caseworker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help.” So it is unusual now, but it is going to become more common in the future? > So adjuncting is decidedly not a middle-class job. But it does sound like one, probably because, before the adjunct bubble, it was. ..."Professor" sounds…

> I'm not in academia, but when I was in college in the 90's, adjunct sounded like a grad student on a stipend.

This attitude was perhaps more appropriate a decade ago, before adjunct faculty were covering a significant portion of the course load and students could reasonably expect most of their courses to be taught by people with the word "professor" in their job title.

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

#27

Post by clintonc » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

__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.

This article is about adjunct instructors, who are not paid per hour -- they are paid a fixed amount per course. Average pay is $3000 per course [1]. Teaching four courses in a semester is a full-time job; this gives $24,000 per year, usually without benefits. Institutions tend to limit the number of courses assigned to each adjunct in order to avoid the adjunct being classified as a full-time employee.

[1] http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Project-Shows-Wide/1364...

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

#28

Post by jonhinson » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

programmarchy wrote: post #24

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? 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?

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

#29

Post by tomsthumb » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 9:58 PM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #8

cheepin wrote: 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.

Only for certain, usually large, schools

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

#30

Post by briantakita » Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:00 PM UTC

programmarchy wrote: post #24

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? 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.