<p>
</p>
<p>I said nothing about what the person is WORTH. I said that $150-250K is “sufficient income.” That much would put him well above the income required to be in the top 10% of earners in the US, and enable him to have a very nice lifestyle in the Pittsburgh area. (Especially if he also got free housing, which many college presidents do.)</p>
<p>The average household income in the US is about $50K. You don’t think 5 times that is “sufficient”? The guy doesn’t live in Manhattan.</p>
<p>I’m really surprised by how anti-academia many CC parents are. Like “College is super important but damn if my kids’ professors are paid a living wage” or “Research isn’t important but damn if my kid can’t get a thesis advisor to spend 100s of hours on a project that will never be published.” Or, my personal favorite. “TAs are awful and no one should have TAs, except my kid, whose funding cones from TAing” (Also, “damn people who want health insurance” but that’s veering into the political). It used to be that adjuncts were professionals who taught a class or two on the side, but increasingly, especially in the humanities but in the sciences as well, adjuncts are PhD holders with excellent backgrounds who are being squeezed out by an ultra tight job market where universities are replacing full-time lines with adjunct positions (but “no one <em>deserves</em> a job… except for my kid”).</p>
<p>Very much agree, psych. :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As someone who does criticize the use of TAs and the obsession to the research to feed a publish or perish model, I will respond to the above post, which I think mischaracterize the reasons why people object to the current state of education.</p>
<p>For starters, some can criticize and ALSO be very much in favor of education, and educators for that matter. It is not about being anti-academia as much as it is being against this poor and often abusive “developments” in higher education. </p>
<p>Further, it is also a matter of perspective. For someone who appraises the world of undergraduates and their treatment in college, the issues might be very different from someone who aspires to “join the club” and pursue a career in research or academia. For the overwhelming majority of members of this site, the issue is about obtaining an education that more or less corresponds to what one spends and how much the “advertised world” ressembles to the reality. </p>
<p>One such reality is that individual tuition hovers at around 3,000 per class. And that seems to be about the current college models that relies of cheap labor pay to adjuncts for an entire class. Bizarre economics at first brush! And, that does not account for the models of using “free” TAs and other indentured servants to deliver that “pricey” education. I do not think that anyone should have to apologize for finding the uses of such poorly trained and unqualified “service providers” disgraceful. I for one do not see how anyone could be allowed to teach at the university level and would NOT be permitted to teach at the K-12 level without additional training or certifications, and especially not someone without much command of English or understanding of the local culture. To put il mildly, if delivering a cheaper version of education is necessary to fund the sinecures of the tenured divas, then have the courtesy to discount the cost to an acceptable price. </p>
<p>And this debate could go on and on. Ad nauseam.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I do not see the correlation between “research” and spending 100 of hours in advising students, as the second part is directly related to the role of an … educator. As it should be!</p>
<p>Honestly…this person didn’t die in poverty because of the college. She died in poverty because of choices she made herself over a long lifetime.</p>
<p>Agree that adjuncts are overworked and underpaid, but she was an adjunct for 25 years? Agree with the other posters who question what she did previously and wh/how she ended up in such a financially precarious situation. And what the heck is the “alternet”. Not familiar with that website nor of the veracity (or lack thereof) of its articles.</p>
<p>
Oh yea! The adjunct bashers have arrived! Yipee!</p>
<p>One freaking big country, filled with colleges, all sorts of educators, programs, goals- and somehow, we manage to generalize, eh? I can’t even find the words.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>$2200 per semester or $2200 per month?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Reading more critically before using the quotation function is never a bad idea. I am afraid you missed the point entirely.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that would be $2200 per course. Really, adjuncts are poorly paid. Often adjuncts and instructors teach 3 classes to make anything close to a living wage.</p>
<p>Ten years ago I got $5000 per semester-long course as adjunct and I thought that was low considering how much prep work was involved. I guess in retrospect, that was very good. How many courses would one have to teach at $2000 per course to make a living wage? Would that be 15 courses per year/5 per semester including summer session to make $30000 annually? Impossible, taking into consideration all the prep work, grading, etc.</p>
<p>But with that said, the story does seem a little extreme.</p>
<p>My husband took a number of his engineering courses from adjuncts. He still says…they were excellent because they were currently working in the field.</p>
<p>At many schools the number of courses adjuncts can teach per year is limited…and it can be as low as 2 per term. </p>
<p>What did this person do before the age of 58? Did she have a job? Did she collect social security? After age 70 the offset from her adjunct teaching would have been small, if any. Was she married? Did her husband collect SS? Could she have collected on HIS record?</p>
<p>She started being an adjunct at age 58. At the time, did she consider this a second career or did she consider it extra income to add to whatever else she was doing…or her future retire,EMT income?</p>
<p>She did this for TWENTY FIVE years. No one, including the president of Duquesne, tied her to a chair and forced her to be an underpaid adjunct professor. For all we know, she loved this job, and would have continued it with no compensation.</p>
<p>There are too many holes in this story.</p>
<p>In some types of courses, it is an advantage to have adjuncts who are working in the field. I can see engineering being that way. My adjunct professors in Occupational Therapy were much better in general because they had to stay current with their skills. My adjunct professors in my Masters program (Information Security) now are MUCH better than those who are full time professors because they have kept up their technical skills. I am hoping to adjunct once I graduate and when my nest becomes empty. A few classes a year will pay off those Parents PLUS loans in no time, or give me an extra vacation a year, help me remodel the kitchen, etc. It will also allow me to sock more money into my retirement. I don’t expect it to give me a living wage though. That’s what my full time job is for. </p>
<p>It is very curious what the woman in the article did until age 58 and why those jobs provided her no pension, retirement or social security.</p>
<p>Maybe she stayed home with her kids and was a community volunteer?
Its not that unusual.
;)</p>
<p>If she stayed home until age 58, who supported her? If it was a husband who worked, she would have been entitled to his SS benefit when she was eligible.</p>
<p>*I didn’t say the President shouldn’t be better compensated, but I am pointing out the chasm between the two compensations. That is what is deplorable in our society, that there is so much of a gap between the people lucky enough to be at the top *</p>
<p>Ok…this idea that very successful people are “just lucky” is part of the problem. Yes, sometimes it’s a right place/right time sort of thing, but very successful people often put in the time, effort…and blood, sweat and tears to get where they are.</p>
<p>Instead, this “lucky” theory proposes that their success was due to some kind of random “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” situation.</p>
<p>Honestly…this person didn’t die in poverty because of the college. She died in poverty because of choices she made herself over a long lifetime.</p>
<p>exactly. This was an educated person. I always think it’s strange when well-educated folks don’t plan for retirement.</p>
<p>Here are a few lines from a source that cannot be linked directly on CC. Using google on some of the words should lead you to a wonderful discussion about the complicated issues raised here.</p>
<p>Quotes follow:</p>
<p>I use hyperbole and satire when I write about higher ed, because I fear if I tried to write a simple critique it would be filled with the anger and disgust I feel when I think about how degraded a noble profession has become…</p>
<p>College and university campuses are wonderful places to visit, and you might even want to live on or near one. Colleges and universities are a generous source for fascinating, informative, and infuriating news. My take on them has been one of an affectionately critical insider, but that too is evolving, for as I continue to read of the naked greed of administrators and faculty and the appalling lack of self-awareness of members of the academy in general, I find, to my great sadness, the affection waning.</p>
<p>The idea that adjuncts and tenured or tenure-track faculty share common cause and stand united against the evil administration is naive at best. On most campuses with which I am familiar faculty have a great deal of say in the terms of their employment through governance. The faculty voice is also heard (and respected) on budgetary issues through advisory committees at the department, college and university levels. In other words, the faculty are deeply complicit in ensuring the adjunct system remains status quo. The math is actually pretty simple: start with the total compensation package of a tenured faculty member (and be sure to figure in all costs–insurance; tuition breaks for spawn and spouse; infrastructure costs such as heating, lighting and office space; sabbatical leave, travel, and research funds). Take that princely sum and divide it by the number of students the faculty member teaches annually. Do the same calculation for an adjunct and his stipend. Compare. Still feel the solidarity?</p>
<p>By the way, for the few who wonder about husband or children, please note that Miss Vojtko was the beloved aunt of six nieces and nephews. No other family mentioned in her obituary. </p>
<p>Let google be your hired researcher.</p>
<p>And why wasn’t this woman on Medicare? Even as an adjunct, either Duquesne was contributing to SS, or if she was a 1099 worker SHE would have been contributing.</p>
<p>It sounds like she was alone, with no support systems at all from family or friends…and that is sad. Surely this financial situation was NOT a new one. She had been doing this work for 25 years.</p>
<p>I think it is remarkable that she continued to teach adjunct until in her 80s. Many jobs have a mandatory retirement age that is not quite that high!</p>