Job Discussion Forums

esl_prof · Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:27 pm Post subject: 70 Courses Per Term? Doable

How many courses would an adjunct college instructor need to teach in a year to earn as much as a university president? Or as much as a tenure-track faculty member?

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,154841.0.html

spanglish · Joined: 21 May 2009 Posts: 742 Location: working on that

Yet another discussion/data point that points to the desperate need to rewrite the social contract, as resources are squeezed more and more tightly into the .1%. Unfortunately, experts seem to be concluding that society is reverting to its norm of extreme inequality. Given that it took a depression and a world war to reorganize society sufficiently to produce 30 years of relative equality and economic growth...prospects for rewriting that social contract do not seem positive.

esl_prof · Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:25 am Post subject:

spanglish · Joined: 21 May 2009 Posts: 742 Location: working on that

Xie Lin · Joined: 21 Oct 2011 Posts: 731

esl_prof · Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 5:49 pm Post subject:

Xie Lin · Joined: 21 Oct 2011 Posts: 731

esl_prof · Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 7:46 pm Post subject:

peripatetic_soul · Joined: 20 Oct 2013 Posts: 303

You would laugh if I told you my tuition back in the early 70s! It was affordable to apply to out-of-state institutions. In addition, students seemed to receive more financial aid (scholarships, state-funded tuition remission, Perkins grants) that didn't put one in debt. There also seemed to be more jobs available, and I don't mean flipping burgers or working retail at minimum wage.

As for adjuncts and doable hours, they are limited by the ACA regs so that, e.g., at our local college, we cannot teach more than 2 courses (12 cr.) per fall and spring and no more than one course (6 cr.) in the summer which yields about an average gross annual income of $25k, assuming, of course, there is sufficient enrollment for the courses you have been assigned (after having spent hours on syllabus and schedule of assignments).

I don't know how this generation can afford to pursue their dream (unless they anticipate a lucrative career in engineering, medicine, law, or an MBA). My mother said only the upper middle class could afford college in her day, and it seems the pendulum is swinging in that direction again.

Ah, the golden years......... Sorry if I've digressed on this thread, esl_prof.

PS

esl_prof · Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:31 am Post subject:

PS,

I just checked the tuition for my alma mater and it's increased seven-fold since my freshman year back in the 1980s. Ironically, my annual salary is approximately the same dollar amount that my father earned as a public school teacher when he was my age back when I went off to college. So, if I were putting a child through college (which, fortunately, I'm not), the likelihood that I'd be able to do so without incurring serious debt or insisting that the child live at home and go to Cheap City College would be quite slim.

You're right about the pendulum swinging back again. Access to college education in the U.S. increased significantly beginning in the post-WWII era due to (1) the economic necessity for more college-trained workers to fill white collar jobs and (2) the GI Bill, which made it possible for returning soldiers to be trained to fill those white collar jobs. Today, as white collar jobs are being outsourced to other parts of the world, the economic need for college-educated workers has significantly declined, and the changes that we are discussing are simply the result of higher education contracting to accommodate the new economic order, the full force of which will be felt when the higher education bubble eventually bursts.