How to deal with student who told me that he pays for my salary?

[Ruralguy]

Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

[Wahoo Redux]

Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

Oh absolutely.  I see this in my wife's TT job. No sane person thinks the TT faculty have it necessarily easy.  But!

Bet'cha make more money than your NTT faculty (and teach less even if you do more service work).
And I Bet'cha you make a LOT more money and have a LOT more job security than your adjunct faculty.

We do get paid in heaps of jewels, however, which as I understand it is unusual.

[fishbrains]

"I pay your salary!"

"Then go find your receipt and get a refund."

I actually said this once. My dean said it was my one and only pass. Fair 'nuff.

[Ruralguy]

Well, we have two adjunct classes. The sort of "pay by the class adjunct", and yes, they are not well paid and don't have benefits (and don't stay long). But we also have senior adjuncts who gain a pseudo-tenure after a few years of teaching a full load (or more years if at reduced load). They basically make my base salary minus the 2 promotion bumps (although one or two may have negotiated bigger than average pay increases) and adjusting for time in. That makes them reasonably well paid for their position (research not required, service not required----though some do both of those). Not great, but reasonable. And they have full benefits (but not sabbatical). They have voting rights.

Anyway, I'm not saying I have it worse or anything like that, just that the tenure track faculty often can be over worked, underpaid, etc, as well.

[polly_mer]

Believe me, you can get roped into lots of extra stuff on the tenure track as well.
Its not all fun and games and heaps of money and jewels.

Oh absolutely.  I see this in my wife's TT job. No sane person thinks the TT faculty have it necessarily easy.  But!

Bet'cha make more money than your NTT faculty (and teach less even if you do more service work).
And I Bet'cha you make a LOT more money and have a LOT more job security than your adjunct faculty.

This situation indicates the discrepancies between types of institutions and departments.

The institution that has a teaching track (NTT and adjunct) and a research track (TT/T, soft money fellows) tends to show that split with research being paid substantially more than teaching.  In terms of hours at work, though, teaching plus some service tends to have slightly fewer when counted over the whole year.

The institution that is holding on by its fingertips and trying all the class scheduling tricks mentioned upthread to try to get a wider market because they only have teaching and service likely is not paying a lot more money to anyone. 

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

The NTT folks in majors/departments where getting any faculty, let alone good faculty, tended to be quite safe at Super Dinky.  I can think of more than one person who was not going to get tenure who was converted to NTT on rolling contracts instead of being fired for not earning tenure.  Having someone in the classroom willing to work hard enough for the pay we provided was a winner over risking again not being able to provide an instructor for a required class in the major that has 30-40 students already enrolled.

Professional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

[mahagonny]

Tenured faculty in certain departments at Super Dinky were fired at various points when the major was eliminated and thus the department was eliminated.  The assertion (and found true every time) was that if we had to bring people back to still teach the general education classes, then we can get adjuncts, VAPs, or nonTT folks at short notice, probably better, and likely slightly cheaper than the long tenured folks.

This is striking, since what I am used to hearing (or reading) from tenured faculty is they estimated that their teaching has improved markedly from how it was in the days when they were adjunct faculty.

Professional fellows usually were paid more per class hour than tenured people because that was the way to keep the professional fellows coming back.  Yeah, the adjuncts in English get paid a pittance.  The "adjuncts" teaching required classes in criminal justice, nursing, and education were paid whatever those professional fellows requested to stay on another two years for courses that are hard to replace.  At one point, the provost tried to offer one of those professional fellows a full-time position because it would be cheaper for the college to also get service; the professional fellow turned it down because he'd rather volunteer for the service he liked (almost always student mentoring or similar direct student interaction) than be told he had to do mandatory service in ways he didn't like (retired high school teacher who was done forever with faculty meetings).

Why is 'adjuncts' sometimes put in quotations and sometimes not? Why are some adjuncts professional fellows to you and some not?

[Wahoo Redux]

At one time Polly lived and worked in a land much different from any land that I have ever lived in or even heard about.  Wonder where she is now.

[zuzu_]

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

[the_geneticist]

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

I agree with Zuzu_!  This is a very offensive thing to say about 2-year college students and faculty.  In my experience, our transfer students are exceedingly well-prepared, responsible, and organized.

[Aster]

It's sort of like high school teachers getting offended when CC professors complain about the inadequacies of high school. The high school teachers think that they're doing a great job, but are isolated in their world and don't have much reference point for what happens to their students when they leave high school. So the people in one bubble world bitch at people in another bubble world, but the bubbles rarely touch, so it doesn't really achieve anything if anyone is bitching. Nobody hears you.

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Only about 40% of the students at Big Urban College who complete their automatic AA degree, and then transfer to our local R2, ever complete. A less than 50% transfer success rate for just a low-level R2 does not seem all that successful to me.

Hopefully other CC's produce better prepared transfer students than Big Urban College does. Meanwhile, I bitch quietly about some of my colleagues for passing everybody, and everyone bitches about the high school teachers for passing everybody. Ha ha.

Professional education is so weird.

[Wahoo Redux]

I taught PT at a rural CC while also a graduate teaching fellow at a nearby R1.

I'm sorry, but my students at the CC ranged from basically competent-and-not-really-good to utterly-disastrous-and-completely-infuriating. 

The head of my CC department was a PhD wash-out from the same R1.  Hu handed me the departmental syllabus (which had some wiggle room) and we literally did 3/4 of the work as the same class at the R1.

We were not allowed to flunk or lower grades based on attendance.  We were allowed to assign "point values" to class activities and deduct grade values from these, so I was never sure what the difference was.

That said, several of my students did transfer to the R1 and I presume other schools, and as far as I know they did fine.  And there were certain things I liked about the CC and have tried several times unsuccessfully to get a job at one.

[mahagonny]

I taught PT at a rural CC while also a graduate teaching fellow at a nearby R1.

I'm sorry, but my students at the CC ranged from basically competent-and-not-really-good to utterly-disastrous-and-completely-infuriating. 

The head of my CC department was a PhD wash-out from the same R1.  Hu handed me the departmental syllabus (which had some wiggle room) and we literally did 3/4 of the work as the same class at the R1.

We were not allowed to flunk or lower grades based on attendance.  We were allowed to assign "point values" to class activities and deduct grade values from these, so I was never sure what the difference was.

That said, several of my students did transfer to the R1 and I presume other schools, and as far as I know they did fine.  And there were certain things I liked about the CC and have tried several times unsuccessfully to get a job at one.

Some students are so motivated they would be learning even without college, and they come along, without much money, and need a degree. They're the reason I could stand my old job as long as I did. They hated many things about the department that I also did. We even talked about it, with some caution.

[Caracal]

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Is there really some sort of agreed upon pass rate? Or grade breakdown? I give all essay exams, but I think if I gave true false exams I'd be giving more As, but I'd also fail more people. It would also be a terrible way to assess students because a true/false exam wouldn't teach anybody how to synthesize and connect information and encourages the idea that my discipline is just about random facts. Honestly, when I think about the rigor of my classes, I'm focused on making sure students have to do good work to get As (don't get me started on our lack of +- grades) and adequate work to get Bs. The grade percentages really don't matter for failing students, they usually fail because they don't turn in assignments and/or don't come to exams. These aren't usually students who have been coming to every class.

[fishbrains]

Same thing I experience every time I have a CC transfer student in my class. I don't want to offend any CC faculty, but CC is worse than not going to college at all, because at least in that case the student doesn't think they've gotten an education. Students with a 4.0 GPA in CC don't even know the most basic things.

How could this be anything but offensive to CC faculty? What a gross generalization that is wholly unsupported by data on the success of CC transfer students.

Also, back when I lived in a city, all the same d@mn adjuncts taught all the gen ed courses at the CCs and the fancy universities. I would teach one class at a CC on MWF and literally the same exact course on T/R for an elite school charging 6x the tuition.

I agree with Zuzu_!  This is a very offensive thing to say about 2-year college students and faculty.  In my experience, our transfer students are exceedingly well-prepared, responsible, and organized.

Yeah, I had to hear this crap from a professor at our regional uni. I finally stopped the little conference and asked him how he could compare his uni's first-time-teaching, uncredentialed, marginally-trained graduate students in their little master's program (from which I had graduated, by the way) to the experienced full-time faculty at a CC; or why he could not equate how both colleges employ the same adjuncts for the same classes with pretty much the same course syllabi. And how so many of our faculty who graduated from his regional uni could be so utterly incompetent after earning their credentials from his uni.

A colleague finally kicked me under the table that time, so I shut up and tried to play well with others.

[Aster]

I have the same problems with most of my colleagues at Big Urban College. Very few professors have experience working at 4-year universities (except for Gen Ed adjuncting), so they don't have a professional frame of reference for calibrating their assessment criteria to appropriately prepare CC students for matriculation. But Professor Nice Guy thinks that he's doing a great job with his 90% pass rates and 30% A's with his all True/False question exams and 30% attendance grade, so whatever man.

Is there really some sort of agreed upon pass rate? Or grade breakdown? I give all essay exams, but I think if I gave true false exams I'd be giving more As, but I'd also fail more people. It would also be a terrible way to assess students because a true/false exam wouldn't teach anybody how to synthesize and connect information and encourages the idea that my discipline is just about random facts. Honestly, when I think about the rigor of my classes, I'm focused on making sure students have to do good work to get As (don't get me started on our lack of +- grades) and adequate work to get Bs. The grade percentages really don't matter for failing students, they usually fail because they don't turn in assignments and/or don't come to exams. These aren't usually students who have been coming to every class.

Agreed-upon pass rates? Not specifically. But there are certain expected grade ranges within certain course types. When a professor wildly deviates from that range over and over again, it is cause for concern. Either they are being way too hard on assessment, or they are being way too lenient with assessment.

When I say "deviate wildly", I am referring to absurdly-mad-level deviation that would make 4-year university faculty turn beet red in the face and cuss loudly about how lousy a community college education is. Like, over half of a freshman majors science classes magically all earning A's, when the normal range for that exact same course at an R1 is 20%, tops. Or passing 90% of the class when the normal range for pass rates at highly selective local R2 for the same course type is only 70%.

Some clueless politician might look at that and say, "Gee, community college professors are magical unicorns that can take anybody and everybody and turn them into outstanding learners!"

But then all of these students transfer to a 4-year university as upperclassmen, and half of them flunk out without getting a bachelor's degree. Oops.