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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?
In all aspects of education, from primary school to university, the growing swarms of administrators soak up the budget. In some school systems, they vastly outnumber the actual teachers, have better pay, and yet contribute nothing to the operation of the schools.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?
Because profit is all that matters?
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
Evermore, even our education system in the USA is now a "big" business, just like healthcare - this is despicable. Its a disgrace. It's been going on for decades, albeit at a somewhat chelonian pace; and now it's accelerating. Keep on voting GOP and corporate clown Dems... and this result will continue. Young people- you must get and vote - save your generation. Mine is lost to the oligarchs.
"At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?"
You are asking the wrong question. It isn't "We" it is "They". Colleges are seen as the bastion of liberalism but they are run as businesses by over paid executives hired by boards of directors (trustees) with the goal of maximizing profits and endowments. There is no "We" in this question.
and for the skilled mostly blue-collar jobs that are vital to our society but do not require 4-year degrees.
Once a skilled trade provided a good shot at a decent middle-class livelihood. Something has happened to devalue these skills.
Young people get college degrees for which they are unsuited because it appears there is no alternative.
Despite all the jokes about degreed barristas working for the minimum wage, the absence of a degree is now the best way to ensure a lifetime of poorly paid jobs.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
*Not* being a college graduate is a certain guarantee of a lifetime of poorly paying jobs.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I honestly feel bad for these people, but they think it's bad now, just wait.
A first semester physics class pretty much covers the same material at every university and doesn't really change from year to year. In this day and age, there's really no reason other than tradition why we need to keep hiring thousands of people to present essentially identical lectures over and over.
Administrators are getting record salaries, all the benefits you can imagine, and extremely lucrative "golden parachutes"
At my university they have a graph showing administrator pay and lecturer pay, and the administrator pay is literally off the chart while lecturer pay is on a steady decline.
It's the same thing in high schools. We're bitching about tenure and bad teachers -- who hires those bad teachers? Administrators. They pick the cheapest green thumbs they can find so they can get rid of the more expensive, more qualified veteran teachers. It is literally, entirely their fault why schools hire bad teachers.
Administrators are the reason high school and university funds are misspent, misdirected, misused, and why actual services to help the students and teachers/lecturers are not funded. They're the ones that want a $400 ELMO machine in every classroom but won't spend a nickel on writing paper, pencils, books, or any of the basics.
When it comes to education administrators are always the problem. They are the most removed from education, they have the least experience with education, and they never listen to the students, parents, or other faculty when making their decisions.
When will the guberment learn blah blah blah wibble blah? This is the angry bold text. Socialists. Socialists. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. Government is bad. Except when it's killing brown people, go America. Kill more brown people. Taxes. Taxes. More angry bold text.
It's the same trend as in America in general, top managers take an ever-larger share of company earnings.
6-figure debt makes it the point. A debt that you cannot refinance makes it the point. A debt you can't escape through bankruptcy makes it the point.
Agreed but the real point is that if not everyone goes to university then the cost borne by students is far less. When I was at university in the UK tuition was free because the government paid it. The argument being that I would then go and get a job and with a higher salary my higher taxes would pay for the investment the government had made.
However this model collapses when 50+% of the population goes to university. First the universities have to either provide additional teaching resources and/or lower graduation standards because such a large increase means that the educational standards on the incoming students are lower. This is exacerbated by the fact that the average salary of all graduates drops because the total wages available does not increase with the number of degrees granted so essentially you have the same tax base as before but now have to pay for twice as many degrees.
The result is that tuition has gone through the roof. The same degree that was free for me 25 years ago now costs £9,000/year ($16,400/year). It is also now a 4 year degree (used to be 3 years) because of the lower standards in school. Of course this means that students acquire so much debt that they have to be extremely concerned about their potential salary after graduating. The puts an increasing pressure for universities to shift from the academic institutes of higher education which have served society for the best part of a millennium (or possibly longer in some cases) towards becoming vocational training colleges where each course is targeted to a specific career which provides enough income to pay of the massive debt so good luck finding the next generation of teachers!