“I have one of the best jobs in academia. Here’s why I’m walking away.” answers the question What if someone who cared about student outcomes got a job as a professor?
Here are some choice excerpts:
Liberal arts programs, and the humanities in particular, have become a place to warehouse students seeking generic bachelor’s degrees not out of any particular interest in the field, but in order to receive raises at work or improve their position in a crowded job market.
Once upon a time, in a postwar America starved for middle managers who could file TPS reports, relying on the BA as an assurance of quality, proof of the ability to follow orders and complete tasks, made perfect sense. But in today’s world of service workers and coders and freelancers struggling to brand themselves, wasting four years sitting in classes like mine makes no economic sense for the country or for the students — particularly when they’re borrowing money to do so.
online education isn’t a solution — it’s a Band-Aid on an infected wound. In place of thought-provoking video chats and genuinely creative software applications the theory promises, most online students get Blackboard — a cumbersome and inefficient program that only a bureaucracy could love.
The most questionable statement within this epic rant is “there’s no time to worry about the fallen when your own pay lags well behind the national average.” What does this means for a humanities professor? The national average for a poet? http://philip.greenspun.com/book-reviews/higher-education is a review of a 2010 book whose authors concluded that a liberal arts professor earns about $242 for each hour of required work ($265/hour adjusted for the inflation that politicians assure us does not exist).
Some people speculate when this system will collapse, but the key is that for whatever reason is that companies have made a four year college degree a requirement to enter the job market. So the higher education system will basically collapse when the American job market collapses -when paid, full time work becomes either so difficult to get or so pays so little that its no longer worth the time or tuition. It will happen when you become better off spending your 20s and 30s in your parents’ basement instead of in the workforce. If this happens, it would be due to a combination of dropping real wages and rising tuition.
However, apparently law school enrollment has been dropping, so the process could have started in one sector of the system.
College education and degrees are another example of American chronyism. Many of the people in hiring positions went to college and got degrees; therefore a degree must be necessary. I once had a boss brag that he didn’t even look at resumes unless they went to college x, y, or maybe z. What? Figures he was super book smart, being as he had multiple degrees from a fancy, well regarded college, not so much common sense though.
When I was in high school twenty plus years ago, the only option that was promoted or discussed at public school was preparing for, and going to college. If that wasn’t for you, you were a pariah. It’s only gotten worse since then apparently. The kids I work with have unfathomable student debt, and many of them say they could have learned all the skills they use for work online. Some of these kids have given up paying their loans altogether, others are repaying them but are just scraping by, requesting deferments, etc.
These young adults will be putting off or dialing back major purchases such as autos and homes as a result. I expect the auto and especially housing markets will feel this dramatically in the coming years. So, all the schools, academiacs, and banks will get theirs, and the expense of the country at large. Just waiting for the next bubble to pop…
The auto and home purchases keep going the same way the inflated colllege tuition keeps going. People are given the money as “loans” with the obligation to repay, whether this is feasible or not. These loans either are made by the government directly, or come from government guaranteed and/ or subsidized financial institutions.
There might be a debt jubilee anyway. Savers are already getting killed by ZIRP. The big objection to a debt jubilee is the punishment of savers. However, I think the eliites like their debt serfs. Its more likely that if this system ends, it erodes away by large numbers of people just refusing to participate.
“The national average for a poet? http://philip.greenspun.com/book-reviews/higher-education is a review of a 2010 book whose authors concluded that a liberal arts professor earns about $242 for each hour of required work”
And how do they arrive at that dubious number?
Just a swag, but lets say the average professor earns $100K/year. At $242/hour, that works out to 413 hours/year of “required work.” Spread over 50 weeks, that is ~8.25 hours/week.
That doesn’t smell right. But lets dig deeper. Three 1 hour classes a week leaves 5.25 hours for office hours, grading, prep, and various other responsibilities. I guess I can imagine that some professors can get by just putting in 8.25 hours/week. But then, I’m sure that there are plenty of professors that don’t earn anywhere near $100K/year, some who earn much more. I’d also guess that the operating definition of “required work” needs scrutiny.
I’m also pretty sure that any professor who can manage to make over $100K year doing less than 10 hours/week of “required work,” has probably gone through 4+ years of grad school, plus post-graduate work and years of publish-or-perish. So, what are the average hourly rates for other professions, like law and medicine, which require similar training and dues paying?
Really though, what I find striking is that you’ve held on to this number for more than 4 years since you wrote your book review and that you bust it out now to refute the idea that humanities professors might be under-compensated. In all that time, did it ever occur to you that it, if not actual BS, smells like it, and at the very least, requires some explanation?
Too bad, because higher ed is a tangled mess of perverse dogma and incentives. Tackling its problems takes hard work and clear thinking.
eas: I hope that I didn’t suggest that an hourly rate was the best way to determine whether or not a particular occupation was “undercompensated” or “overcompensated.” In my opinion the only way to look at those issues would be to look at the number of qualified applicants for a typical job opening (plus, in some cases, look at restrictions on people entering the field (see medicine) or collusion by employers (see Apple and its Silicon Valley peers)).
If there are tenure-track humanities professorships that cannot be filled with PhDs (the minimum qualification these days) then I would say that was evidence for undercompensation.