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I'm sorry, but this is just dumb. No one who has done the research would complete a masters with the expectation of landing a full-time teaching gig at a college. Yes, community and non-traditional colleges do require a masters degree at minimum for full-time positions, but there aren't many of these, and those with PhDs will snatch them up first. There is a shortage of ESL and Spanish language teachers in the K-12 sector. She should have stayed there and can still go back. I don't feel sorry for her at all.
Oh, good, another thread full of hated and contempt for the working poor. Yes, we'd all be filthy rich if we just bootstrapped a little harder.
There's no contempt for the working poor. It's a plain fact that a part time job does not pay the same full salary as a full time job. How is that contempt?
“I almost died last semester because I was working six days a week, and with all the traveling and putting out fires, I would forget to take my medication.”
This article has more information on how much she makes.
Quote:
Before taxes, her annual salary is $22,000, but because she teaches what’s considered a full course load, she’s been told she’s ineligible for public assistance.
So, apparently, she had a stable job teaching at a high school until a student accidentally injured her eye. Supposedly, her doctor told her to find another profession. After that, she tried selling cars and jewelry before becoming an adjunct. If she can teach at a college, then how come she can't teach at a high school? This just doesn't make any sense.
I do think schools are abusing the adjunct position, but this still doesn't explain why someone would choose this to be his or her one and only job.
How much should we be paying for someone who teaches 6hr a week?
Six-hours a week in the classroom . . . twelve to eighteen hours outside doing prep, research, reading and grading papers, determining grades, office hours, tutoring struggling students, etc. Teaching is much more than the time spend inside a class with students.
I'm an adjunct, but I do it for the fun, not the money. Lately . . . it's not fun anymore, due to the workload, and I'm considering quitting.
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The above was what I originally wrote. I'd like to modify my comments below, after having read the newspaper article.
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Went back and read the orig referenced article. I have no sympathy for this "homeless professor". It sounds like she has an attitude problem and chose to major in a field without much demand. I just looked up what my pay rate is for my adjunct classes, and it is by no means a trivial amount. Maybe so if you include all the outside-of-class time, but still better than any retail job. And, I do get benefits. I could get medical, but have declined them as I get them from my day-time, mortgage-paying full-time job. I also get sick time, and was surprised one year when a slip was given to me showing how much sick-time I have on account. I have so much, that I could call in sick every day of a one-day-a-week class for the whole semester.
People need to understand that academia is often not a worthwhile profession in terms of making a comfortable living. Too many freshly minted PhDs and not enough tenure track jobs. I wanted to get into academia and then I researched the job market and realized that doing so would likely be a horrible investment in the long run. The trend is to hire a bunch of adjuncts and very few actual professors. The labor market supports this. The main exception is for professor positions in fields where you could make much more in the private sector (i.e. a lot of STEM areas).
If she has the education and credentials to teach, she has the ability to not be homeless. Its ultimately her choice to allow herself to be exploited by big academia.
Many days I regret ever going into education. Go to school for 6 - 10 years to obtain masters/ph.d. Pay thousands of dollars in tuition. End up making $40 or $50K a year teaching at a university. Such a ripoff. Feel sorry for the next generation of children. The elites in our world have totally screwed up the educational system in the United States.
According to recent news reports, colleges are increasingly turning full-time professorships into multiple adjunct positions to cut costs. If this is true, I can definitely see where this woman and others like her might have a gripe, particularly if people in this position really do want to work more hours teaching.
That is 100% correct. Most colleges and universities (especially public ones) are relying more and more on part-time faculty who are scheduled semester-by-semester and paid by the class (or sometimes even by the number of people who are in the class). Why is this happening? Because schools don't want to pay benefits and can schedule people on an as-needed basis without management having to do serious planning (basically what's known in the business world as drop-shipping). It's the Walmartization of education, people.
Do you want to pay full tuition for your student to attend a university and have them be taught only by part-time faculty who don't even know what classes they will be teaching (or even IF they have anyclasses) until a week or two before school starts? Teachers who have to schedule barista work at Starbucks in their off hours so they can pay their utilities? Or teachers who are working for a city's parks department all summer when they would normally be doing research in their field of study if they were paid as actual professors?
Depending on one's major, there are students at prestigious universities who never even see a full-professor in the classroom until they are juniors. But their parents are paying far MORE tuition than parents paid for their kids to get this same degree five years ago. Meanwhile, the students have less contact with educators and those educators have less time to devote to their profession.
Before you attack the teachers you might want to think about the administrators who are taking this kind of advantage of you-the-tuition-payer. Or the sports coaches who are making millions while the part-time instructors WHO ARE EDUCATING are barely earning minimum wage.
...have them be taught only by part-time faculty who don't even know what classes they will be teaching (or even IF they have anyclasses) until a week or two before school starts?...
Hogwash! I know exactly what classes I'll be teaching next Fall...starting September AND what I'll be teaching next Spring, a year away. I know which nights I'll be teaching, but for one class, I don't know the classroom. For the others I do.
Maybe I'm "special". I highly doubt it because every adjunct I've encountered are dedicated to their students. If a department wants you, they will do pretty much anything to keep you. My school, my department, appreciate their adjunct, and they let us know often.
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