WSJ Op-Ed: Faculty don't really work all that hard

[mahagonny]

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.

[Antiphon1]

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. 

[polly_mer]

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.

[mahagonny]

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.

[pedanticromantic]

@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?

[mahagonny]

@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.

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.

[fast_and_bulbous]

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.

[phattangent]

It'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.

[mahagonny]

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.'

[pedanticromantic]

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.

[mahagonny]

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.