<p>^Again, I agree with everything you are writing. Thank you.</p>
<p>My good friend teaches at a local state school as adjunct. The subject she teaches is one that much in demand and because the profession, accounting, pays enough so that people don’t need that second job, it’s not as easy to find someone with the credientials to teach a university level course. SHe is well qualified, as a tax attorney and CPA with years of experience. She does not want the stress of a full time job and this fits her needs just fine. She teaches two classes and it gives here just some extra money, not a living wage, but she doesn’t need that. </p>
<p>Teaching high school is not so easy these days. You need certification and unless you can teach math/science, getting a public school job is competitive. I looked into it as I was a math major and could get exemptions for the certification and the demand was there, but the commitment is a lot, plus I would have to start the process of certification. I would much rather teach two college courses, but then I am not looking for full time work and pay either. So, yes, the part time adjunct positions are something a lot of people want. So there is no reason to up the pay, cut down the number of positions. It’s a sweet deal for most people. It’s just not intended to be the primary job, career, and if anyone, like this late Duquesne prof, makes it the main deal, it is going to lead to abject poverty. I don’t see the big deal about this, other than the fact that a universiy has someone on staff in trouble like this, working for them for so long,and some provisions and gestures of aid were not made as part of the university community being in need. Shame on Duquesne for that. But I don’t blame the adjunct situation at all. <a href=“Yahoo”>Yahoo;
<p>For every adjunct who is happy to be an adjunct, there are four or five who are not, and who are looking for f/t entry into the field.</p>
<p>Of course you can always find individuals who are happy with their situation. That does not invalidate the reality that the systemic overuse of adjuncts to staff core academic programs is bad for the long-term quality of the institutions and the student experience they offer.</p>
<p>Getting a high school job is indeed tough. It’s no tougher than getting a college f/t job, though. And you don’t need a PhD.</p>
<p>QuantMech #252
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<p>This seems to me one reality that is sort of being talked around on this thread. Adjunct can sometimes be a “mommy track” and that may not be a good thing. That women are willing to do it doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing.</p>
<p>One of my kids goes to a school that boasts 99% full time professors. The school costs a ridiculous $60K/yr.</p>
<p>Do we want schools to keep there costs down? Does it really matter when he price of college is so out of whack with reality and there is a supply of parents like me, dumb enough to pay it?</p>
<p>I’m confident that my kid is getting an “elite” education and that her ROI will be a high income and excellent employment in the future. I just hopes it’s enough for my kid to help me out in my retirement.</p>
<p>My other kid is the exact opposite and for some reason I see that one with he most potential to earn millions.</p>
<p>He wasted money one day so I got on his case about wasting money and how money doesn’t grow on trees. He stopped to grab a $10 bill out of a bush as we passed by. Apparently money grows in bushes as far as he’s concerned.</p>
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<p>Yes. Yes. Yes. In a nutshell. All other discussion is interesting but peripheral. IMHO</p>
<h1>265 I am pretty sure it isn’t faculty salaries causing tuition increases during the last decades. It doesn’t seem to me faculty hires have kept up with increasing student enrollment the last 10 years. I would be interested if anyone knows the facts. I don’t.</h1>
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<p>My D also goes to a similarly priced school. There are many schools at that price level which rely more than they should on adjuncts. We looked carefully at that reliance before deciding where to spend our money. 60K is crazy ridiculous, no doubt about it. It’s a luxury price. For that amount, your kid ought to be getting a luxury education, not just a “good enough” education. She should have professors who will be around in five years when she is applying to graduate school, so that she can get them to write recommendations. She ought to develop mentoring relationships with faculty she can call in 10 years. She ought to have personal attention and copious opportunities to visit office hours. She ought to have small classes where she is not just another number. She ought to have faculty with the time to really read and comment on her papers. Etc. Etc.</p>
<p>{quote]He wasted money one day so I got on his case about wasting money and how money doesn’t grow on trees. He stopped to grab a $10 bill out of a bush as we passed by. Apparently money grows in bushes as far as he’s concerned
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Love this! Most of the rest of the thread is making my head spin.</p>
<p>The idea that faculty salaries are driving tuition increases is a myth. Costs in higher ed have risen in part for the same reason as they have risen in every other human-capital-intensive industry, such as health care: the cost of providing benefits to employees has skyrocketed. Take out benefit costs and you’d see a different picture.</p>
<p>Administration costs have also increased massively. The number of full-time administrators/staff per full-time faculty member at my school is probably 1:1. Recently I heard someone in administration refer to the “academic branch” of the university. If academics are the “branch,” what is the trunk or root? This mentality is sadly pervasive at places with large and complex administrations. Even midsize schools can easily have a dozen or more vice-presidents of this or that. Many of these people have little or no interaction with students. They manage things like accreditation or tech or outcomes assessment or building/landscape management. Then there is the university counseling service, and the massive and growing tutoring/remediation sector for students who really aren’t prepared for college work but are admitted anyway.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that these functions aren’t legitimate or important, but it burns me to hear that the excessive costs of the modern university are all down to cushy faculty sinecures. It’s just not true.</p>
<p>As it became common knowledge that law jobs were becoming more and more scarce and that the field was over saturated, applications to law school started to decrease. I’ve been hearing about the oversupply of PhD’s for years. Why isn’t the message getting through to college seniors? The blame for the poor employment prospects for PhD’s rests at least as much with the students who pursue a degree of questionable value as it does with the grad schools that accept them.</p>
<p>MommaJ, it’s love. People fall in love with a subject and convince themselves that they will make it in the field. It’s no different than why people still try to make a living as actors, musicians, etc. Many (most?) people aspire to law school because it is (or used to be) a stable bourgeois profession, not because they are on fire with passion to study law. </p>
<p>I also think that a certain number of people who enter PhD programs just like being in school. It’s where they feel comfortable, where they feel they belong. It’s what they know. The outside world seems like a hostile place with different values, ones they don’t want to embrace. This is more common than you might think.</p>
<p>Re alh #267 and NJSue #270: One of my colleagues did a study at my university. The number of faculty has remained fairly steady over the past 20 years, and faculty raises have been less than the tuition increases on a percentage basis. We are a public institution, and funding from the state has dropped considerably. The costs of health insurance (covered by the university) have truly skyrocketed, despite multiple efforts that were supposed to keep them down.</p>
<p>The number of students is up by 5 to 10%, relative to 20 years ago. While the number of faculty has remained essentially constant, the number of people in administrative or other professional positions has gone from half of the number of faculty to a 1:1 ratio, just as at NJSue’s school. For us, the combination of 1) decreased state spending, 2) rising health insurance costs, and 3) increase in administrative staff accounts for the tuition increase, pretty much in full. I do not know how the increase breaks down between these factors, but if you double the number of employees in one category, that’s got to have a big effect. Administrators talk about 1) and 2), but I have never heard anyone talk about 3), except on rare occasions to excuse it, or to blame it on a need for more people in area X, which might need more but hardly accounts for doubling.</p>
<h1>271 , #272 Most students I know pursuing PhDs are in full-funded programs: tuition paid and decent living stipend, including health insurance. Very few (and really outstanding) students I know received Law School scholarships. When they did they were tuition only, I believe. I am not positive about that.</h1>
<h1>273 - Thank you for responding</h1>
<p>adding: at some schools, graduate students are teaching undergraduates as part of their “payback” for the stipends. As well as to prepare them for careers teaching. They are part of the non-full-time teaching labor force in universities. Cutting back on graduate students will mean less teachers in some cases, because there will be the same number of undergraduates.</p>
<p>Interesting figures, QuantMech. Not at all surprising.</p>
<p>RE law school: it’s also only 3 years. Most PhD programs take considerably longer. The average length-to-degree time in my field is over 7 years (post undergrad). That’s in part because many people flounder in the dissertation stage or end up teaching a lot (“fully funded” can mean tuition remission with a stipend, or it can also mean teaching duties plus benefits and tuition remission). </p>
<p>I don’t advise anyone to go for a PhD unless 1) there is full funding and 2) you can accept, both intellectually and emotionally, that there is an exceptionally high chance of placement failure at the end of your training, and you may have to start your professional life all over again. It’s #2 that college seniors just can’t grasp. They have the optimism of youth and the belief that they are special, that the odds don’t apply to them. This is not unique to those seeking PhDs!</p>
<p>Schools can hire adjuncts cheaper than the cost of FT grad students total comp. Many have reduced grad students. Win Win</p>
<p>I know several tenured professors at state schools whose annual salaries have decreased each year for the last four years because there have been no raises, but insurance and parking fees (for university lots) have increased annually. I don’t know how common this situation is, but I imagine increasingly common.</p>
<p>We’ve had small average raises in most years, but I have colleagues at other schools whose salaries have been frozen for multiple years in a row. There are some other schools where salaries have been frozen for senior faculty, in order to allow raises for the young faculty to be larger.</p>
<p>I know senior faculty who have volunteered to teach overloads so younger, untenured faculty are able to take research leaves, usually after receiving outside grants, and work on the publications necessary for tenure. I understand everyone has suffered in the new economic reality. I don’t think tenured faculty are a special case and should be immune to the hardships others are enduring. I don’t, however, necessarily see them as universally complicit with regard to the exploitation of adjuncts. And I certainly don’t believe they are enriched at the expense of their students.</p>
<p>Back to the original post…</p>
<p>This woman didn’t die in poverty because of what Duquesne University was paying her. She died in poverty because of decisions she made over her adult lifetime. She was well educated, and could have likely made different choices in her adult life.</p>
<p>Yes, it is sad that she died in poverty. But hundreds of people die in poverty often enough. Unfortunately some don’t have the education or other means to work out of their poverty. </p>
<p>This woman had choices.</p>