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Teaching College Is No Longer a Middle Class Job
An anonymous reader writes When you think of people who teach at a college, you probably imagine moderately affluent professors with nice houses and cars. All that tuition has to go into competitive salaries, right? Unfortunately, it seems being a college instructor is becoming less and less lucrative, even to the point of poverty. From the article: "Most university-level instructors are ... contingent employees, working on a contract basis year to year or semester to semester. Some of these contingent employees are full-time lecturers, and many are adjunct instructors: part-time employees, paid per class, often without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is a relatively new phenomenon: in 1969, 78 percent of professors held tenure-track positions. By 2009 this percentage had shrunk to 33.5." This is detrimental to learning as well. Some adjunct faculty, desperate to keep jobs, rely on easy courses and popularity with students to stay employed. Many others feel obligated to help students beyond the limited office hours they're paid for, essentially working for free in order to get the students the help they need. At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?
The "public" U.C. System in California (remember: state-owned and operated) is one of the worst examples in the nation... it used to be a "shining example" to be emulated. There's no "profit motive" at all in the UC System - just giant heaping piles of politically-connected Democrat activists given "administrator" jobs with huge salaries, generous benefit packages, and no real duties.
Janet Napolitano (formerly governor of AZ and Obama DHS secretary) needed a place to hang-out, make lots of money, and "cool off" politically before going back into federal politics someday so her high-level Democrats found her a "parking place" .... Democrat Jerry Brown of California made her the president of the University of California. Nothing says "academic excellence and freedom" like "used to run the agency that gropes people and rifles through their luggage at the airport" (and sucks the data from their laptops and tablets if it chooses to during the "screenings").
Yeah, you're right.... ignore all the politics and corruption and don't notice that much of the problem rests in government-run or non-profit schools .... blow the Karl Marx dog whistle! Some greasy, smelly, toxic teacher once told you to blame "corporate greed" and "profit" for everything and you never thought things through enough to realize how utterly ridiculous that was.