Do College Professors Deserve a Living Wage?

[n2doc]

by KEITH HOELLER
When running for reelection last year, Vice President Joseph Biden specifically singled out professors as one of the major reasons for the skyrocketing cost of college tuition: “Salaries for college professors have escalated significantly,” he said. Last month President Obama released his plan to hold down the costs of tuition and make college more affordable, which would certainly make it more difficult to raise faculty salaries.

Both President Obama and Vice President Biden should be experts on professors’ salaries. Obama was a nontenure track “senior lecturer” of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago prior to his serving in the Senate and Biden’s wife Jill is an Associate Professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Yet Obama and Biden have completely neglected the huge income disparity on college campuses between the comparatively well off tenure-track faculty, such as Jill Biden who earns $82,000 annually, and the deplorable situation of the nontenure-track faculty, whose plight is so bad that last year the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story entitled, “From Graduate School to Welfare: The Ph.D Now Comes with Food Stamps.”

Indeed, one million college professors now teach off the tenure-track with poverty-level wages that have long-rivaled Wal-Mart and MacDonald’s workers. With the recent clamor for higher wages for unskilled labor, should our nation’s highly skilled “contingent” professors also receive the minimum wage for each and every hour they work, and time and a half for overtime?

more

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/17/do-college-professors-deserve-a-living-wage/

[shenmue]

1. Yes

A friend of mine was an adjunct professor and she made about $14,000 a year. Incredible.

[snappyturtle]

2. Yes. Adjunct professorships are draining professors and, I contend,

not good for education.

[darkangel218]

3. It depends.

My college professors make at least $50k a year.

[FreakinDJ]

7. $150K here in CSU Calif

[pscot]

4. I would think the respect,

admiration and general acclaim accorded by the public should be sufficient compensation.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Awesome.

Time for you to go, Grasshopper.

[mike_c]

5. bullshit....

Biden's statement about college professor's wage hikes contributing to the increasing cost of education is bullshit. More demonization of teachers.

I'm a tenured professor in the California State University. My wages have not increased since 2007, and that raise was small, and entirely eclipsed by the wage reduction that we suffered in 2010 when we were furloughed for 10 percent of our earnings. Actually, we received our first salary increase since 2007 this month, and it was less than one percent for most of us. So over the time that professor salaries have remained stagnant or declined, tuition has nearly tripled (from $1,400 per year in 2002 to $5,400 per year in 2011).

That tuition increase has NOTHING to do with professor's salaries. Zip. Nada. On the other hand, it has everything to do with ongoing public disinvestment in education.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Exactly. Top administration officials have been hogging the pie, none left for mere faculty.

College boards keep voting larger and larger salaries for their Presidents, in imitation of Wall Street's "performance (!!) bonuses", now renamed "retention bonuses".

[Igel]

19. And *that* has little to do with it.

Read it again: Disinvestment in public education.

Adding $200k to the salary of a chancellor at a campus with 20k students comes out to $10 per student.

Removing $20 million from the school's budget over 5 years comes out to $2 000 per student. That budget reduction can be by cutting funds or by not increasing funds to cover inflation and increased expenses. For example, Arizona, by allowing the top x% of students into public universities, had a problem--very high drop-out rate for first-gen students that was a bit of a political nightmare. So they added infrastructure to help: summer orientation, mentorship programs, required first year in the dorms (meaning "new dorms" had to be built), counseling, tutoring ... None of which brought in income but all of which required expenses.

We obsess over the $10 because it fits our ideology, what we desperately want to argue. We ignore the $2 000 increase because to prevent it would take the wind out of our argument's sails, because that $20 million can go to fund food for the starving "food insecure", can go to help those without medical care, can help to pay for rent for single mothers.

[Starry Messenger]

12. Cosign and thank you.

I was shocked when Biden said that. I'm a lowly adjunct, we're over 50% of the college teaching workforce now and our wages are laughable. Meanwhile, the college keeps creating new Dean and VP positions...

[mike_c]

15. I'm seriously waiting to hear that we need to create a new $100K+ VP of parking services....

Would not surprise me at all. We have more AVPs than Deans, for crying out loud.

[Starry Messenger]

16. It's funny because it's true.

And also sad. It could happen!

[progressoid]

6. I wonder if he has the guts to say the same about coaches salaries.

[prairierose]

8. More classes are taught by adjuncts than tenure track faculty...

Adjuncts are a way for colleges and universities to save money on teaching costs and to keep faculty from being eligible for any benefits. I was cut back by a class so that I would not be eligible for health insurance when that part of the ACA went into effect. I have taught at the same school for over 5 years and have yet to get anything resembling a raise. This is what is happening to most post secondary faculty in the US today. It is part of the denigration of teaching and part of the dis-investment in education. And I am about ready to give up teaching altogether.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. $82K at a community college ? Only in the wealthy counties near DC, nowhere else in the country.

Someone needs to educate Joe about the term "representative sample".

http://chronicle.com/article/2013-AAUP-Faculty-Salary/138291/

Law professors aren't representative either.

[Squinch]

13. No! Bourgeoise intellectuals! Ship them to Siberia!

Oh, wait. That was me channeling Stalin.

Of course they should.

[xocet]

14. Absolutely. n/t

[redstatebluegirl]

17. Where I used to work

they had a Vice President for EVERYTHING!!!! We joked that before long there would be a VP in charge of the men's room! All were former political friends of the administration....one had an office near mine and I swear I never saw him go in or out. Of course the office was redecorated before he "moved in ".

No raises since 2009 for faculty. My husband is tenured and teaches as well as maintaining a research lab, writes grants, serves on TONS of committees. He works harder than ever. When he began the university took 28 percent of his grant money for university overhead, now it is over 40 percent. Grants are harder to get even for good biomedical research. Without that no summer money and no chance for any raises

Most people think professors work 3 hours a day WRONG!!!! If they do we are moving to that school! He works 12 months not 9!

Sorry, I guess this touched a nerve. I feel for adjuncts, they are being used to get rid of tenured faculty...not good for either group!

[warrant46]

18. Absolutely !!

[Sancho]

20. I don't agree with the entire premise here...many "regular" professors aren't raking in the dollars.

My wife and I have taught in public schools, private schools, public universities, and private universities for 35 years. We've both taught as adjuncts and both also been "tenured" (what we call a "continuing contract" in some states).

First, the longer you stay as a professor at a university, the further behind you get...this is well documented. If you want a raise, you probably have to seek a job at another school and move (we've done that a couple times). Professors and higher paid teachers used to make a middle class salary, but in recent years they've been falling behind. Many state university systems have paid few real raises in almost 20 years.

For example, here in Florida an engineer, desirable business degrees, and almost any STEM major might get $80,000 as a starting salary if they were a good student and had a good track record. That's what energy companies, government contractors, international marketing, etc. pay for skilled and educated students. I can name students who got those salaries in the last few years.

Next, both of us have made double or triple the $'s simply by going outside the education system. With 5 degrees, my wife makes about the same teaching as a new undergraduate major in one of the desired majors. Whenever we get behind, we have to stop teaching or work nights, holidays, and weekends on contracts outside of our schools to make ends meet. Every year we get full-time offers from private firms at salaries higher than we get teaching. If you have a marketable skill, you can usually find someone to pay you!

There are a few professors who are way overpaid, and usually the really high salaries are "professors" who are administrators making crazy salaries ($200,000-$400,000 in Florida). That skews the reported averages. There are also some adjuncts and visiting professors who are underpaid and trying to move into a full-time job. In most public universities and public schools, tenure only assures "due process" if you're fired, and plenty of folks with tenure are non-renewed every year. In Florida, there are 2-3 thousand contracts non-renewed every year and many are "continuing contracts". Tenure just tries to make it difficult to fire folks on a whim without a legal fight.

It is true that adjuncts are treated badly and underpaid. No one tracks how many eventually get a full-time job, but many do it they are doing a good job. It's not necessarily true that professors make great salaries.

[duffyduff]

21. Even in public schools, you have no real job security because school districts

have an arsenal of methods to get rid of unwanted teachers, and no, they don't have to be "bad" ones at all to get sacked.

"Fired" or, to use the correct bureaucratic term, "dismissed," in public ed, simply means some idiot principal has put in a "recommendation for dismissal" which the post-probationary (misnamed "tenured&quot teacher decides to appeal the dismissal to the superintendent/board and ultimately the hearing officer or panel or school board, and in some 3/4ths of the cases, they "lose" the case. Then, if they can get an outside attorney if they didn't have one already to take the case, a near impossibility, they go through the civil court system since the law restricts appeals of administrative law "cases." Administrative law, which termination hearings are part of, is a complete and total farce, manipulated with abandon by school districts. Things that would get lawyers and others disbarred or thrown in prison for in civil or criminal cases are allowed in these fake tribunals.

Even if you "win" or are "reinstated," you will have a target on your back for the rest of your career. Once you piss off public school administrators, you are cooked.

However, the overwhelming majority of teachers faced with "termination" either retire early or they resign in lieu of a dismissal, usually the latter in some mistaken belief that it will help improve their chances of getting work elsewhere. It doesn't, for it is seen by other school districts as an admission of guilt regardless if the teacher is guilty. After all, why wouldn't you appeal a dismissal since it doesn't cost you anything unless you were guilty?

And of course probationary teachers are fired all the time; school districts, however, don't call them being "fired" but instead are called "non-renewed" or "non-re-elected" in cases where the situation is NOT a layoff.

[mutian]

22. Education

Please see

[De Leonist]

23. Of course

Every single adult no matter age, education level or job experience deserves a living wage as long as their willing to work full-time. This may not vibe with some but frankly I don't give a damn.