The article is behind a paywall, but Inside Higher Ed has an overview at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/22/when-misleading-op-ed-wall-street-journal-irks-academics-its-time-fact-check-faculty. The short version is that a long-term tenured professor is stating that professors are significantly overpaid ($200k/year is not uncommon) for six months of work per year at less than 40 h per week. Thus, this person proposes making college free to students by paying faculty per hour, presumably only for hour teaching/prepping/grading.
Quote
But then there are the facts about how much full-time professors are actually paid, and how much work they do. Epstein says it's "not uncommon" for professors to make $200,000 per year, but a more accurate statement would be that it's not uncommon for professors to make that much at private, independent doctoral institutions.
<snip>
How much do academics actually work? It varies. And it's fair to say that academic life entails more flexibility than some other fields. But 50 to 60 hours a week is a good estimate. A small research project at Boise State University in 2014, in which faculty participants tracked their hours, for example, found that professors work 61 hours per week -- more than 50 percent over the traditional 40-hour workweek.
<snip>
Adrianna Kezar, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California who studies the faculty, said Epstein's essay "is almost absurd in its lack of accuracy," starting with the lack of actual full-time salary data. And "the idea of getting paid hourly just to get a fair wage definitely resonates with adjunct positions," she said. "They honestly would be paid better if they got an hourly wage rather than a lump sum of $3,000 on average to teach an entire class."
Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/22/when-misleading-op-ed-wall-street-journal-irks-academics-its-time-fact-check-faculty
These things are pretty hard to quantify. I suspect that there is not just variation, but extreme variation. Both among different schools, different areas of study, and within individual departments. There's also the question of what counts as working. I know a dept chair who sits in his office and watches jazz videos on youtube. Who knows how hard other people are really working, and how efficient they are being? Well some people publish 2 books a year, so they must be busy. There are many faculty who are obsessive about their work. But I've seen plenty of senior faculty who give the appearance of working very little and accomplishing even less.
But I'd say the same is true for plenty of other professions. I see school crossing guards who spend all their time sitting in their cars. The road repair crews I see seem to be spending a lot of time doing nothing. Do lawyers really work all the hours they bill? I don't think so. Are the people in HR always busy? I don't get that impression. A lot of jobs involve sitting around doing nothing for significant periods of time. Faculty have the advantage that they can generally do their sitting around at home. Sure it is a sweet deal. I'd welcome some faculty being made to work harder, but I hardly think that there are huge savings to be made from this proposal.
Factual errors aside, the real question is: "overpaid compared to what?"
Starting salaries at Google and Facebook in my field are $150k+ for someone straight out with a PhD. Higher if you go into finance. People with a Master's in machine learning or AI are looking at similar starting salaries (or they join startups with the potential of a massive payout). I talked about this with a lawyer friend of mine and she thought even that was underpaid: the starting salary where she works is $200k straight out of law school and it comes with (considerable) automatic, annual increases.
Not that everyone gets these jobs, but they're far less competitive than tenure track academic positions -- never mind getting tenure. And while even full professors are likely stuck flying economy class no matter the distance, the private sector pays for business class (or first/private, once you're further up the chain).
Yes, if you have a tenured (or even tenure track) position, you won't be living in poverty (at least in my field). Because you're a professional with valuable skills. Don't get me wrong: the academic life has many perks that I wouldn't want to give up. Not many jobs let you pursue whatever questions you're interested in and provide you with the infrastructure to do that with generally little need to justify what you're doing. But none of that does you any good if you spend all day worrying about how you'll pay the bills.
Oh, please. This is yet another slap at us egg heads who do their work between their ears rather than by the sweat of their brows.
I'd be much more interested in a study looking at work task allocation and salaries of managers in service industries compared to professors in all institutions. Besides, full professors making $200,000 plus is pretty much limited to a handful of disciplines at a very few schools. Given the author, this may be a guilty dog barks first situation.
Maybe a few full professors in my field at Princeton/Harvard/Yale make 200k. Maybe. But the highest salaries I know of in my field go to people who are among the top 5 researchers in their subfields
in the world, and they're earning around 130-150k.
For my part, the most a faculty member can earn at my institution is ~67k USD, in one of the most expensive cities on the continent.
Aside from that, I don't have much more to say. It doesn't seem worth the effort, really. Except maybe for this:
QuoteUnder proposed free higher education plans, then, Epstein says, "perhaps it would make sense to pay university teachers by the hour, with raises in the wage awarded by seniority. Surely they could not complain." After all, he continues, "the two most common comments (some would say the two biggest lies) about university teaching are, 'I learn so much from my students' and 'It's so inspiring, I'd do it for nothing.' A strict hourly wage for teachers, as free university education may require, would nicely test the validity of that second proposition."
Validity is a property of
arguments, not of propositions or statements. Bit weaksauce for an emeritus English prof to screw that up. Maybe he should have taught more comp (properly).
The "how many hours do people work" is hard to measure, but "$200k is not an uncommon salary" is both easy to measure and demonstrably false.
That salary is well above the 90th percentile for faculty salaries in the US, making it definitively an "uncommon" salary.
It's also very important to separate grant (summer) salary from yearly 9-month salary in these cases, since the argument is usually about what the *school* pays the person, not what they're getting paid as (effectively) a freelancer for the summer time.
Have you seen what business professors and engineering professors make? Computer science isn't so bad either. Some of them are easily six figures out of the gate even at middling institutions. "What the market demands" and all that BS. And I'm not slagging on any of those fields, it's just that it's not even close to being "fair" and people's own perceptions are going to clouded by their own experience. You can look up salaries online if you know where to look at most public institutions. I recommend a bottle of whiskey by your side when you do that, especially if you are an English or History professor.
There was a crusty old son of a beanbag in the earth sciences I had to deal with at my former institution who made $147k for sitting around and doing nothing but stirring shit up at faculty meetings, basically. This institution had a strange clause where you could be re-promoted ever 5 years - as if you are applying for full over and over again, and getting a nice 8k or so salary bump. He worked the system until he couldn't work it anymore, and then retired the year I left when we denied that son of a beanbag from his umpteenth "promotion".
But, that is an anecdote. The vast majority of faculty do not make that kind of money.
So, I say: Screw all those a-holes slagging on faculty. The WSJ can eat a bag of dicks. I'm so very tired of that narrative. Most faculty work 60 hours a week anyway and are banging away during the summer as well. A few abuse tenure, but they are the minority. For the credentials we have many of us could easily make 2-3x more in industry - and probably work fewer hours.
GRRRR.
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on July 22, 2019, 02:29:21 PM
Have you seen what business professors and engineering professors make? Computer science isn't so bad either. Some of them are easily six figures out of the gate even at middling institutions. "What the market demands" and all that BS. And I'm not slagging on any of those fields, it's just that it's not even close to being "fair" and people's own perceptions are going to clouded by their own experience. You can look up salaries online if you know where to look at most public institutions. I recommend a bottle of whiskey by your side when you do that, especially if you are an English or History professor.
From CUPA-HR data, even the median at top-research institutions doesn't hit the claims of 200k+, especially if you're not counting grant contributions to salary.
https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=46
Comp Sci has a 145k median for full professors at R1 institutions, and Engineering (broadly) is $141k median. Business is the highest at $169k for full professors at R1 institutions, followed by Law at $163k.
Sure, there are some senior faculty picking up 200k- especially the ones supplementing salary with earnings from companies they've spun off, patents, summer salary from grants and consulting work. But that isn't their stated salary.
I guess that they want to contrast that to the hard physical labor performed by the hedge fund managers and bank CEOs and CFOs who are the main readers of WSJ.
Seriously, this is deflection. I'm sure that some new scandal will surface in which the top people at some corporation have run it into the ground, and are walking away with a $20 million bonus. But who cares about things like Enron, we know that poverty is the result of the actions of a bunch of Godless Perfessers, Sucking The Blood Of The Common Man, While Doing Nothing But Teaching One Class A Year And Publishing "Research" That We All Know Is Nonsense.
It serves two purposes. First, as i wrote, it deflects attention away from the 1% who are collecting an increasing share of the country's wealth, and second, it serves to discredit any study which proves that the Rich And Powerful generally have not reached where they are through their own personal efforts, but because of multi-generational manipulation of laws and control of access to opportunities.
So when a study comes out of Yale which demonstrates that the same few families have been controlling a huge proportion of the wealth, or that upward mobility has screeched to a halt, the people who pay the salaries of WSJ writers will point to this Op Ed as a "proof" that the Yake study is not to be rusted, because it is the Eggheads themselves are the ones who are taking the money away from The Honest Working Man.
I'm really sorry that my hemorrhoids and my septic system together prevent me from putting the Wall Street Journal to its most appropriate use.
Quote from: egilson on July 23, 2019, 10:19:02 AM
I'm really sorry that my hemorrhoids and my septic system together prevent me from putting the Wall Street Journal to its most appropriate use.
Oh, don't sweat it. The paper's as soft as the "journalism".
College professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on July 23, 2019, 11:16:06 AM
Quote from: egilson on July 23, 2019, 10:19:02 AM
I'm really sorry that my hemorrhoids and my septic system together prevent me from putting the Wall Street Journal to its most appropriate use.
Oh, don't sweat it. The paper's as soft as the "journalism".
I finally cancelled my subscription of 20+ years when they published an Op-Ed complaining about the metric system.
Quote from: ciao_yall on July 23, 2019, 12:45:08 PMCollege professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Well, I think I just found the most depressing observation in this thread. I hope this isn't anyone's actual (attempted) reasoning. :(
Quote from: phattangent on July 24, 2019, 06:17:46 AM
Quote from: ciao_yall on July 23, 2019, 12:45:08 PMCollege professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Well, I think I just found the most depressing observation in this thread. I hope this isn't anyone's actual (attempted) reasoning. :(
About a year ago, a financial aid officer at a local HBC said of freshman composition: "How difficult is it to teach that class? A monkey could do it." She no longer works for that HBC. Many of her critics did in deed think she said that since "anyone" could be an English professor, those profs are overpaid.
Quote from: RatGuy on July 24, 2019, 06:55:29 AM
Quote from: phattangent on July 24, 2019, 06:17:46 AM
Quote from: ciao_yall on July 23, 2019, 12:45:08 PMCollege professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Well, I think I just found the most depressing observation in this thread. I hope this isn't anyone's actual (attempted) reasoning. :(
About a year ago, a financial aid officer at a local HBC said of freshman composition: "How difficult is it to teach that class? A monkey could do it." She no longer works for that HBC. Many of her critics did in deed think she said that since "anyone" could be an English professor, those profs are overpaid.
This seems open to some contrasting interpretations. What was her academic background? For instance, if she had taken such a course and it was really dumbed down, then her own experience could support her claim, even if that's not the way it is at many other places. But, regardless of context, the institution would want to get rid of her since it doesn't put them in a good light. (It's actually even
more likely to tick them off if she's
right.)
Freshman comp easy to teach? My impression is the opposite. It's impossible to teach, for a large proportion of students.
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 22, 2019, 09:19:36 AM
Oh, please. This is yet another slap at us egg heads who do their work between their ears rather than by the sweat of their brows.
It's not too much of a slap at me. My salary can't be too high because it is zero. I am paid either hourly or by piecework stipend. Besides, I'm not
real faculty. I am
adjunct faculty and the school has said it would prefer not hiring us. Broadcast it, actually, through the local media.
The WSJ can go ahead and sling their mud; I just crawled out of the sewer.
The question prompted by all this is does/should higher ed operate on a theory about what instructors should be paid that is independent of 'this is where the pay we offer falls in the range of similar positions at similar institutions.'
Well, that was one of the shortest GCF's ever. There! I said it. Now you don't have to.
I'm not sure I entirely understand your reply, but here goes. The referenced article seems to imply professors are overpaid based on their perceived lack of effort and truncated work week. Were you a full time faculty member, would you agree with that view of your work as characterized by the WSJ? The real quandary is whether all employees in higher education compensated at the same rates as similarly qualified employees in private industry? Further, are part time or contract employees paid at the same rate relative to their qualifications in private industry? I certainly empathize with your frustrations concerning adjunct pay. I'm not certain your response is about the article.
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 24, 2019, 10:59:34 AM
I'm not sure I entirely understand your reply, but here goes. The referenced article seems to imply professors are overpaid based on their perceived lack of effort and truncated work week. Were you a full time faculty member, would you agree with that view of your work as characterized by the WSJ? The real quandary is whether all employees in higher education compensated at the same rates as similarly qualified employees in private industry? Further, are part time or contract employees paid at the same rate relative to their qualifications in private industry? I certainly empathize with your frustrations concerning adjunct pay. I'm not certain your response is about the article.
I haven't seen the article yet. I'm not a subscriber. I'm just noting that as far as feeling disrespected, the Wall Street Journal can't make me feel more that way than the workplace already does. And for that matter, I'm not really faculty, even though I make a living teaching. The university doesn't consider us faculty. So if it's a case of 'if the shoe fits, wear it' then it doesn't fit.
As for 'if I were full time faculty, would I agree with the author' I suspect the worst of what he says is true sometimes, if it's like other articles I've seen of that ilk.
Quote from: mahagonny on July 24, 2019, 01:03:05 PM
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 24, 2019, 10:59:34 AM
I'm not sure I entirely understand your reply, but here goes. The referenced article seems to imply professors are overpaid based on their perceived lack of effort and truncated work week. Were you a full time faculty member, would you agree with that view of your work as characterized by the WSJ? The real quandary is whether all employees in higher education compensated at the same rates as similarly qualified employees in private industry? Further, are part time or contract employees paid at the same rate relative to their qualifications in private industry? I certainly empathize with your frustrations concerning adjunct pay. I'm not certain your response is about the article.
I haven't seen the article yet. I'm not a subscriber. I'm just noting that as far as feeling disrespected, the Wall Street Journal can't make me feel more that way than the workplace already does. And for that matter, I'm not really faculty, even though I make a living teaching. The university doesn't consider us faculty. So if it's a case of 'if the shoe fits, wear it' then it doesn't fit.
As for 'if I were full time faculty, would I agree with the author' I suspect the worst of what he says is true sometimes, if it's like other articles I've seen of that ilk.
Again, this thread is about the article referenced by the OP. I certainly empathize with your situation but fear you are committing a logical error.
Let's skip over the empathy part --- I maintain a busy schedule. what logical error?
Quote from: mahagonny on July 24, 2019, 05:56:57 PM
Let's skip over the empathy part --- I maintain a busy schedule. what logical error?
From my perspective, anything that starts with "I haven't read the thing we're discussing" and then goes on to give an opinion about something the poster has not actually read has a grevious logical error irrespective of the opinion that follows.
Aha! If you're lucky, you can see the article by using a browser that hasn't worn out its welcome, or doesn't keep track of your free uses.
Here it is:
'Who'll Take A Pay Cut For Free College?
Democratic candidates for president, in their impressive expansiveness, are promising free college. Some limit their proposals to community colleges, others to state-run schools, and a few, going for broke, want also to forgive student debt for private-college tuition. Since no realm of American life has undergone greater inflation in recent decades than higher education, this is no piddling promise. The cost to taxpayers could be in the trillions, though the prospect would please a nephew of mine who this autumn is sending a son to Dartmouth at the annual price of $76,000.
If government is going to pay for college, at least it ought to try to bring down the cost. I taught at a university for 30 years and have a few suggestions. Start at the top: I would reduce the salaries of university presidents by, say, 90%. (At the institution where I taught, the president made more than $2 million when last I checked.) I would also evict them from their rent-free mansions and remove their cadres of servants. The contemporary university president, after all, has little or nothing to do with education, but is chiefly occupied with fundraising and public relations. If universities were restaurants, the president would be a maître d'. To encourage their fundraising skills, perhaps they could be paid a small commission on the money they bring into their schools—cash, so to speak, and carry—excepting that on money used to erect more otiose buildings filled with treadmills, computers and condom machines.
The next big cut in the cost of higher education would be in superfluous administrative jobs, for the contemporary university is nothing if not vastly overstaffed. All those assistant provosts for diversity, those associate deans presiding over sensitivity programs, those directors for student experience—out, out with them. I would also suggest dispensing with courses that specialize exclusively in victimology, the history of victim groups told from the point of view of the victims. Young men and women do not need reinforcement in their already mistaken belief that they are victims because of their skin color, ethnicity or sexuality.
Another place serious money could be saved is college athletics. I've read that the highest-paid public employee in most states is the state-university football coach. The school at which I taught is not a state school, but its reasonably successful football coach earned $3.3 million in 2017, ranking him only 32nd among all college football coaches.
Nick Saban, the football coach at the University of Alabama, earns $8.3 million a year. Mike Krzyzewski, the basketball coach at Duke, earns $7 million. The argument for these astonishing figures is that football at Alabama and basketball at Duke more than pay for themselves. The Alabama football "program," as they like to refer to this most brutal of sports, with its postseason games and television fees, brings in nearly $100 million a year. Duke's perpetually winning basketball teams doubtless result in more student applications and alumni donations.
Under pure capitalism, Messrs. Saban and Krzyzewski might be said to earn their pay. But if higher education is to be free, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would have it, we are no longer talking about capitalism. Coaches' salaries could be greatly reduced and the money earned by college sports—which means chiefly football and basketball—would need to be turned over to the federal government to help pay the cost of education itself.
Which brings us to the faculty. Faculty jobs in American universities have risen well in excess of any visible improvement in the quality of university teachers: $200,000-a-year-or-more professorships are now not uncommon. When I began teaching in my mid-30s, an older friend, long resident at the same university, said to me, "Welcome to the racket." What he meant is that I would be getting a full-time salary for what was essentially a six-month job, and without ever having to put in an eight-hour day. At the tonier universities, professors in the humanities and social sciences might teach as few as three or four courses a year, the remainder of their time supposedly devoted to research. Like the man said, a sweet racket.
Under free higher education, perhaps it would make sense to pay university teachers by the hour, with raises in the wage awarded by seniority. Surely they could not complain. After all, the two most common comments (some would say the two biggest lies) about university teaching are, "I learn so much from my students" and "It's so inspiring, I'd do it for nothing." A strict hourly wage for teachers, as free university education may require, would nicely test the validity of that second proposition.
Free higher education—what a splendid ring it has, sufficient tintinnabulation to cause one to forget the old axiom that you get what you pay for.'
(bold and italics are mine)
It's actually even better than I thought. Thanks, Eigen.
See, the author proposes raises in wage awarded by seniority. We never got that until we formed our own union, against the expressed wishes of our provost, and with zero support from our tenured faculty. Well, why should it be surprising that our right and opportunity to unionize means nothing to them, to state the case charitably, after they pointedly agreed to shut us out of theirs. And yet here is a tenured guy who wants us to get these raises as an incentive to stay. I don't see how I'd have much to fear with him.
It is true we don't know how many hours per week are worked by tenured people, so he might be spinning there. He seems to doubt that professors are doing the research they claim they are doing, but another question might be 'how much research that was done was actually needed?'
The article makes a lot of the same complaints about spending priorities (extra administrators, sports, lavish facilities) that are regularly made around here, but it's the part about professors being that struck a nerve. So if we want we can come out in favor of deep tenure, publishing mania, administrative bloat, lavish student centers, strange trendy curricula, kick-ass sports programs, etc. with the hope that some of the largesse continues to go to faculty. Except, as I wrote, I am not faculty. I'm a temporary employee that they're letting teach another semester. so i'm not going there, not with any particular vigor.
For public higher ed, this is what happens when you cut state funding to nothing and corporatize it. No surprise, really.
I'm all on board with getting rid of useless administrators and obscenely paid coaches.
But those hundredthousandaire tenured faculty and their fancy Honda Civics, not so much.
My campus has a WSJ subscription through ProQuest so I was able to read the article, but I can't get to the 458 comments on the journal's website.
Anyone know whether a few of those comments point out the factual errors in the op-ed?
Quote from: Biologist_ on July 25, 2019, 11:43:13 AM
My campus has a WSJ subscription through ProQuest so I was able to read the article, but I can't get to the 458 comments on the journal's website.
Anyone know whether a few of those comments point out the factual errors in the op-ed?
The AAUP Twitter post had a link to the article which also gives access to the comments:
https://t.co/XiWIzotjty
Quote from: phattangent on July 24, 2019, 06:17:46 AM
Quote from: ciao_yall on July 23, 2019, 12:45:08 PMCollege professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Well, I think I just found the most depressing observation in this thread. I hope this isn't anyone's actual (attempted) reasoning. :(
Yet what I usually see on CHE and InsideHigherEd is that while women are seeking professorships, they still aren't getting them in great numbers. Whereas more than half of adjunct faculty are women, and academia, which is nothing if not liberal, is fine with that.
Quote from: Biologist_ on July 25, 2019, 11:43:13 AM
My campus has a WSJ subscription through ProQuest so I was able to read the article, but I can't get to the 458 comments on the journal's website.
Anyone know whether a few of those comments point out the factual errors in the op-ed?
Haven't found any yet and I've read more that half. I did see this exchange:
'This essy is full of untruths and cliches. I opened it expecting some insight. I was disappointed.'
'What was untrue?'
'Well for one, there are a whole lot of adjunct professors out there who don't make anything near $200,000, nor do the vast majority of most tenured professors either. Sure, there are some, depending on the school and discipline. It's generally widely acknowledged that faculty don't fall into the same category as the administration (or the head coaches in big time sports) in terms of pay.'
and
"The retired professor forgot to mention the burden of the huge public pensions collected by these people. Of course, why retire when you do little or nothing to begin with? A vast amount of these public pensions are underfunded, adding stress to an already broken bureaucracy. The irony is that the great minds could be the ones responsible for breaking the country's back."
The author certainly knows about the large number of adjunct faculty and their work conditions. I suspect he declined to mention them for a reason: the verdict on tenure track faculty is not affected. If you believe someone is overpaid, he is not less overpaid because someone working alongside him, also teaching students, is paid a lot less. Or maybe he laid the groundwork for saying adjunctification is a great thing (which some administrators obviously believe) but wouldn't own it. At the same time, his whole argument starts with 'what are you folks with the good jobs willing to give up in order to make free tuition feasible' which seems to be a fair question.
Quote from: eigen on July 24, 2019, 09:30:29 PM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 24, 2019, 05:56:57 PM
Let's skip over the empathy part --- I maintain a busy schedule. what logical error?
From my perspective, anything that starts with "I haven't read the thing we're discussing" and then goes on to give an opinion about something the poster has not actually read has a grevious logical error irrespective of the opinion that follows.
Not sure that's what Antiphon1 meant.
Quote from: marshwiggle on July 24, 2019, 07:48:29 AM
Quote from: RatGuy on July 24, 2019, 06:55:29 AM
Quote from: phattangent on July 24, 2019, 06:17:46 AM
Quote from: ciao_yall on July 23, 2019, 12:45:08 PMCollege professor used to be a pretty respectable job... and now that so many women and people of color are getting PhD's and seeking professorships, the field is suddenly "overpaid?"
Well, I think I just found the most depressing observation in this thread. I hope this isn't anyone's actual (attempted) reasoning. :(
About a year ago, a financial aid officer at a local HBC said of freshman composition: "How difficult is it to teach that class? A monkey could do it." She no longer works for that HBC. Many of her critics did in deed think she said that since "anyone" could be an English professor, those profs are overpaid.
This seems open to some contrasting interpretations. What was her academic background? For instance, if she had taken such a course and it was really dumbed down, then her own experience could support her claim, even if that's not the way it is at many other places. But, regardless of context, the institution would want to get rid of her since it doesn't put them in a good light. (It's actually even more likely to tick them off if she's right.)
If HBC stands for Historically Black College then any use of the term "monkey" in the context of that HBC is problematic.
Second, the more remediation the students need, the harder it is to teach Freshman Comp.
Quote from: mahagonny on July 26, 2019, 02:09:27 AM
Quote from: eigen on July 24, 2019, 09:30:29 PM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 24, 2019, 05:56:57 PM
Let's skip over the empathy part --- I maintain a busy schedule. what logical error?
From my perspective, anything that starts with "I haven't read the thing we're discussing" and then goes on to give an opinion about something the poster has not actually read has a grevious logical error irrespective of the opinion that follows.
Not sure that's what Antiphon1 meant.
That's exactly what I meant. Your cherry picking and inflation of an apparent favorite complaint twist the original article's main arguments. As to the comments, you chose a couple of the very few mentioning the employment status of professors. Most of the comments attacked or defended administrators and coaches.
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 26, 2019, 08:22:02 PM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 26, 2019, 02:09:27 AM
Quote from: eigen on July 24, 2019, 09:30:29 PM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 24, 2019, 05:56:57 PM
Let's skip over the empathy part --- I maintain a busy schedule. what logical error?
From my perspective, anything that starts with "I haven't read the thing we're discussing" and then goes on to give an opinion about something the poster has not actually read has a grevious logical error irrespective of the opinion that follows.
Not sure that's what Antiphon1 meant.
That's exactly what I meant. Your cherry picking and inflation of an apparent favorite complaint twist the original article's main arguments. As to the comments, you chose a couple of the very few mentioning the employment status of professors. Most of the comments attacked or defended administrators and coaches.
Oh, you're back. Thanks for responding. Now I have the opportunity to ask -- are you one of those many academics who frequent these forums and are in favor of free college tuition in the USA? I'd honestly like to know. But I might as well tell you, I am not happy to pay higher taxes in order to make this possible, as, among other reasons, doing so is additional sacrifice and support for a system that sorts professors into two categories with starkly unequal, inequitable treatment. And as a person who feels the bite of the tax that I owe, I may indeed have favorite complaints.
How do I feel about tuition free college? It's not a bad idea.
However, there is a misconception here and in other online discussions about who should pay for what. Tuition actually covers very little of the cost of a class. And, instruction is one of the least costly parts of education. You will see salaries eating up a large portion of the budget. As some of the comments to the WSJ piece pointed out, sports, administration and facilities eat up a greater portion of the salaries than faculty. All in all the tuition question is largely a red herring for people looking to scapegoat someone for the high cost of higher education. You may want to look at how businesses market college. There are any number of vanity costs that have nothing to do with learning. Student loans are just another example of private industry piggybacking on public policy.
The worn out trope of an overpaid and under worked professor is the wrong target. The actual cause of the explosion of tuition bills lies in which expectations you are willing to pay for. If you don't care about instruction and just want to learn, a public library card is free. Most of us need an academic tour guide and a pedigree, though. So, should you decide to pursue higher ed, you have to decide what you are willing to pay for. Many community colleges and public universities provide very cost effective paths to the degree of your choice. A fair number of private universities discount tuition. But complaining about the cost gets you no where. Higher ed is a choice. No one is forced to pursue a degree. Most plumbers make more than I do without any degree.
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 26, 2019, 10:38:28 PM
The worn out trope of an overpaid and under worked professor is the wrong target. The actual cause of the explosion of tuition bills lies in which expectations you are willing to pay for. If you don't care about instruction and just want to learn, a public library card is free. Most of us need an academic tour guide and a pedigree, though. So, should you decide to pursue higher ed, you have to decide what you are willing to pay for. Many community colleges and public universities provide very cost effective paths to the degree of your choice. A fair number of private universities discount tuition. But complaining about the cost gets you no where. Higher ed is a choice. No one is forced to pursue a degree. Most plumbers make more than I do without any degree.
One might also ask the value of a degree based on how instruction is delivered. The elite institutions that do pay $200k for tenured full professors and often have zero out-of-pocket costs for families earning "only" the national median household income aren't generally the same institutions that have armies of people being paid peanuts to cover general education classes.
The reason many of the under-2000-enrolled-students, undergrad-only colleges are at risk of going under is not fabulous amenities, but the fixed costs of infrastructure including IT that don't scale nicely at the low end of enrollment. In addition, people like to attend accredited institutions that have adequate record-keeping and pay their utility bills etc. Again, those things don't scale at the low end of enrollment very nicely and people who have the skills to be, say, accountant have other options if we're not paying market rate. People generally don't volunteer to be financial aid federal contact and legally on the line to ensure the institution follows all those rules.
But some institutions do have armies of people willing to teach for peanuts. Some of those people do a fabulous job in the classes for which they are responsible. Others, well, one might wonder about the educational value of checking a box when it's clear that that's all that's going on. One might wonder about the total educational value of general education being taught by armies of underpaid adjuncts when other people get full-time professors who have invested in the entire job that includes how those classes should articulate together to provide a education.
Quote from: Antiphon1 on July 26, 2019, 10:38:28 PM
How do I feel about tuition free college? It's not a bad idea.
However, there is a misconception here and in other online discussions about who should pay for what. Tuition actually covers very little of the cost of a class. And, instruction is one of the least costly parts of education. You will see salaries eating up a large portion of the budget. As some of the comments to the WSJ piece pointed out, sports, administration and facilities eat up a greater portion of the salaries than faculty. All in all the tuition question is largely a red herring for people looking to scapegoat someone for the high cost of higher education. You may want to look at how businesses market college. There are any number of vanity costs that have nothing to do with learning. Student loans are just another example of private industry piggybacking on public policy.
The worn out trope of an overpaid and under worked professor is the wrong target. The actual cause of the explosion of tuition bills lies in which expectations you are willing to pay for. If you don't care about instruction and just want to learn, a public library card is free. Most of us need an academic tour guide and a pedigree, though. So, should you decide to pursue higher ed, you have to decide what you are willing to pay for. Many community colleges and public universities provide very cost effective paths to the degree of your choice. A fair number of private universities discount tuition. But complaining about the cost gets you no where. Higher ed is a choice. No one is forced to pursue a degree. Most plumbers make more than I do without any degree.
The author himself named all these things as the culprit of out of control spending. He only got around to faculty last. I'm only saying I don't take the article personally, because it's not a slam against me. It's a slam against spending priorities including tenure.
I think I know what your problem is. You want adjunct faculty to take these kinds of opinion pieces personally and then condemn them. You want solidarity from us. You - as a group I mean, 'cause I don't know you -are gonna have to do more for us before getting it.
We almost did have free college at some point. My wife put herself through four years of state college with part time work on weekends and in the summer. A few years ago. It's not impossible.
i think we can both relax. No one with a platform of free college is going to be elected president in 2020. but if the democrats are silly enough to run such a candidate, we'll get four more years of Trump, which I won't like.
@Mahagonny. It IS a slam against you.
This is just yet another attack on the "intellectuals": a classic move by fascist regimes and it's been slowly gearing up for years. The rhetoric around "experts" has been fascinating (and dismal) to watch. The fact that politicians put down experts is absurd: after all, shouldn't the experts be exactly who we should be asking to help solve our significant world problems? It's just that they don't like the answers, so the politicians have to slag the experts off, in order to put forward the "one true answer" (according to them).
Most people outside of working in academia don't understand the difference between a lecturer and a full professor, so now people will think anyone who teaches in a college classroom is going to be making $200K a year. It's just another way to put us all down by pointing to the extreme outliers and saying we're all working just 6 hours a week, 6 months a year, and the rest of the time we sit in the garden and read books and sip sherry. They are trying to put a dividing line between intellectual people and everyone else, in order to then devalue what we have to contribute.
Given that most tenured professors now probably have at least one post-doc under their belt, that means professors spend more years training than any other profession (including brain surgeons, who only spend 8 before their residency, the equivalent perhaps of being tenure track), so should be paid accordingly. To be a professor: 4 year Bachelors, 2 year Masters, 6 year PhD, 2-4 years post-doc/adjunct... and then you're only an "assistant" professor on probation (the equivalent of a resident, perhaps) for 6 more years, then at least 5 years at associate. 25 years to get from high school to full professor. Where in the article does it tell people that's what it means to be a professor?
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
@Mahagonny. It IS a slam against you.
This is just yet another attack on the "intellectuals":
Thanks for the compliment, but it's not warranted. I'm just really good at a few things that the students are required to learn for credit, ( and some of them even love it) so I keep getting hired.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
The rhetoric around "experts" has been fascinating (and dismal) to watch. The fact that politicians put down experts is absurd: after all, shouldn't the experts be exactly who we should be asking to help solve our significant world problems? It's just that they don't like the answers, so the politicians have to slag the experts off, in order to put forward the "one true answer" (according to them).
Which experts though? Does more knowledge always make one more liberal? I'm not convinced.
I think some the author's bombast or exaggeration is because he didn't feel like he fit in the academic world.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
They are trying to put a dividing line between intellectual people and everyone else, in order to then devalue what we have to contribute.
"Divide and conquer" is a depressingly effective technique when enacted on a general population whose critical thinking skills have atrophied - due in part to the same people actively working to destroy the system that at least tries to enable the development of said critical thinking skills. Not that anti-intellectualism hasn't always been a current running through American society. But it appears to have gotten much worse.
We are in for a really rough ride. Add environmental catastrophe to the mix and it almost doesn't matter who is in power anymore... just as intended. The robber barons will keep robber baronning until the peasants revolt, and I'm not sure that will ever happen.
It's so very clear what they're doing and it's so very frustrating to realize that I am effectively powerless against it.
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on July 27, 2019, 08:26:41 AMIt's so very clear what they're doing and it's so very frustrating to realize that I am effectively powerless against it.
This gave me chills.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
Most people outside of working in academia don't understand the difference between a lecturer and a full professor, so now people will think anyone who teaches in a college classroom is going to be making $200K a year.
And then what will happen?
See, he's saying we should get a pay bump for seniority. He agrees with my union. But, we fought for it through muck and mud. Retaliation, apathy. He just says 'give it to them. They deserve it.'
Quote from: mahagonny on July 27, 2019, 07:32:00 PM
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
Most people outside of working in academia don't understand the difference between a lecturer and a full professor, so now people will think anyone who teaches in a college classroom is going to be making $200K a year.
And then what will happen?
See, he's saying we should get a pay bump for seniority. He agrees with my union. But, we fought for it through muck and mud. Retaliation, apathy. He just says 'give it to them. They deserve it.'
Sorry, I don't understand you. My point is that he encourages people to think everyone teaching in a college/university classroom is on $200K a year. People then get riled up because they think those instructors also only work 6 months a year, etc.
If he wanted to make a real case, he should have clarified that most people teaching in the classroom are earning something closer to $40K/year.
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 28, 2019, 10:02:35 AM
Quote from: mahagonny on July 27, 2019, 07:32:00 PM
Quote from: pedanticromantic on July 27, 2019, 07:11:36 AM
Most people outside of working in academia don't understand the difference between a lecturer and a full professor, so now people will think anyone who teaches in a college classroom is going to be making $200K a year.
And then what will happen?
See, he's saying we should get a pay bump for seniority. He agrees with my union. But, we fought for it through muck and mud. Retaliation, apathy. He just says 'give it to them. They deserve it.'
Sorry, I don't understand you. My point is that he encourages people to think everyone teaching in a college/university classroom is on $200K a year. People then get riled up because they think those instructors also only work 6 months a year, etc.
If he wanted to make a real case, he should have clarified that most people teaching in the classroom are earning something closer to $40K/year.
Agreed. Or he could have said 'part-timers' are making well less than that, and aren't even welcome in unions much of the time.
He could also have made his point about the role of tenure in more detail. For example, he implies that we aren't getting all the research publications we are paying for. I notice he doesn't say 'crack down and get these profs busy with their research. Time's a-wasting.' He knows the same thing we all know. Many of them are of so little consequence that nobody even suffers if they don't get done.
His point about higher paid older full tenured who have light schedules is not that far off, however indelicately stated. You can argue about how many there are, but they exist, and I've known some. And he didn't even bother to talk about how some state budgets are facing strain in the future, and now, from the underfunded faculty pensions. Then again, he's probably collecting one.
When you write opinion pieces with more detail they don't have the same impact.
on edit: I suspect Epstein has this in mind too: once you point out that many people teach in college for very little money, the tenured use the injustice scenario to advocate for more funding. Almost none of the funding, were it to happen, would go to increases in off-the-tenure-track compensation. It would go to more tenure track positions and more promotions for those already on the tenure track. and of course, he doesn't like their liberal politics.