I am disappointed. This is a valid and important topic and needs to be reported and discussed, but the use of extreme cases of compensation difference destroys the credibility of the argument.
Really, comparing top-level medical dean positions with a part-time teacher of poetry? And the athletic coach compensation debate is old hat... tho…
I am disappointed. This is a valid and important topic and needs to be reported and discussed, but the use of extreme cases of compensation difference destroys the credibility of the argument.
Really, comparing top-level medical dean positions with a part-time teacher of poetry? And the athletic coach compensation debate is old hat... those teams tend to return value in excess of their costs for these schools. They are a business concern outside of the business of academics and should not be lumped together.
This piece would have been so much stronger had there not been a reach for sensationalistic comparisons, and instead the data had just reported the compensation of the full-time administrative staff vs the full-time tenured academic staff. I live in a university town and know that the administrative pay exceeds the academic pay significantly. But the other key topic of discussion should be the bloat of administrative positions. The ratio of administrative employees to students, and the ratio of administrative employees to academic employees has skyrocketed over the years. It makes sense just like it makes sense that the federal government keeps expanding the number of employees. There are no controls nor disincentives for constraining the growth. Existing administrators build their bureaucracies without much challenge. Budgets need to be inflated every year to justify the ask for more.
The fix requires a change to the controls and incentives. However, it seems that one party in our two party political system is completely resistant to those changes as the large number of employees in the education system feeds its campaigns.
I do not think comparisons such as what a poet can teach compared to what a doctor can teach should be done on the basis of $ worth. Learning has value but should it be/can it be monetized? It is true that in our current system, everything (and I mean everything) is measured and then given a worth in $. But should it be? I am not sure why this struck me but it did. We keep viewing everything as though it is for sale or will give a return on investment. Seems like the $ market is controlling everything including our thinking. There may indeed be too many (counting) administrators but I think that glut of administrators is a natural result of a structure built on counting and $. I think education, like housing and food and healthcare needs to be protected from the total control of the market. We need to look at the structure that forces us to start ranking humans: Poets; doctors; lawyers; farmers and on and on. That is what markets do.
The brutal reality is that people that want to teach poetry need to have some other source of income to live at a basic, decent level (not be a "starving artist"). They need to be married to a high earner, or someone that is independently wealthy, or inherit a significant amount of money or property, or have a side gig or something like that.
Historically, public education, especially K-12, was able to limit costs by hiring young unmarried women who eventually aged out when they got married and had their own children. Then they were replaced by other young women that couldn't easily find better jobs. The education system had a good pool of low wage labor, some of which were very smart women that didn't have many other career choices besides teaching, nursing, etc.
Now, women continue working after getting married and having children, and many school districts pay lavish salaries to affluent teachers (mostly women) that were able to get graduate degrees, by mid and late career.
I know of a suburban K-12 school district in a relatively affordable mid-sized city in northern california (not the bay area, not LA region) that pays senior teachers with grad degrees $90,000/year, with awesome retirement, medical, etc. Some schools in affluent neighborhoods, where parents DEMAND the "best" teachers have parking lots that are half full of luxury SUVs that the well paid senior teachers with graduate degrees drove to work.
The starving poetry teacher (an adjunct?) in New Jersey made distinct education and career choices that have consequences.
Even with a 14% raise, the low-wage adjunct poetry teacher still isn't going to raise themselves out of poverty. If the strike gets them medical benefits that could be a greater improvement, which is a good idea (especially if faux "diversity" jobs, grifter positions, are eliminated to cover the costs).
A number of cliches come to mind reading this. However, suffice to say that yours is the reactionary argument of the socialist egalitarian. While I agree that in a market economy some positions/careers are over-valued and under-valued with respect to society benefits, the same is true in any regime. The pursuit of perfection in this case is the enemy of the good. A market based system of paying people for job skills based on market supply and demand is severely flawed except compared to every other system.
My two sons are artistic right-brained. They will generally lead lives less economically successful than the children of our friends owning strong nerdy left dominate brains. However, my sons did figure out that they have to have marketable job skills to make a reasonable living, and pursue their art as a side hustle. And maybe one day their art skills will sustain their economic lives. But they are good with the side hustle.
bloated admin in higher education just needs to be (mostly) burned to the ground, it is corrupt neo-communism that is impossible to reform.
you are correct that these labor-activist appeals are garbled and nonsensical, undermining the credibility of the appeal, I have seen many of the same kind of nonsense, mixing facts and emotional-subjective victim narratives, for decades.
"teachers' unions" are pustules of "woke" nonsense.
"It makes sense just like it makes sense that the federal government keeps expanding the number of employees. There are no controls nor disincentives for constraining the growth."
Frank Lee
True. But it only makes sense in the fact that there nothing to constrain debt spending (similar to continual unpaid, credit card spending) at the Federal Government level. This is why a federal balanced budget amendment is vital to being on the Congressional agenda and passed as soon as possible. This debt spending trickles down to universities in large amounts. Just as the oligarch class have purchased government officials (with tax money, mind you), so too have they purchased large universities (with tax money). If we outlawed tax money to be secured by Universities under the auspicious of dubious grants and subsidies, then the bloated salaries and staffs of university administrators would NOT continue to grow either. Personally, if a University wants to exist on the income terms of their tuition and private endowments, then I couldn't care less how they operate-- or what they pay anyone on their staff. It's always your choice to work for them; or to go to school there. But, again,, when tax money is being used to prop up these obscenities (such as outlined by Chris), that should be outlawed immediately. Its up to the taxpayer to demand that of their representatives. If they continue to ignore the responsibility to demand that accountability, then there is no purpose in complaining about it. Unfortunately, this is all Chris does in his article. Striking is NOT demanding tax payer accountability. It just plays into the private institution hoax these universities are foisting upon the taxpayer. If you really think about it, then I believe you have to come to the conclusion that it reinforces and perpetuates these obscene practices.
The picket lines should be forming outside government officials and representatives offices, not university doorsteps.
yep. the labor movement (such as it is) got in bed with Clintons-Obama-Biden who got in bed with neoliberalism/corporatism and they ABORTED "progressive" (or any) actual reforms.
I am disappointed. This is a valid and important topic and needs to be reported and discussed, but the use of extreme cases of compensation difference destroys the credibility of the argument.
Really, comparing top-level medical dean positions with a part-time teacher of poetry? And the athletic coach compensation debate is old hat... those teams tend to return value in excess of their costs for these schools. They are a business concern outside of the business of academics and should not be lumped together.
This piece would have been so much stronger had there not been a reach for sensationalistic comparisons, and instead the data had just reported the compensation of the full-time administrative staff vs the full-time tenured academic staff. I live in a university town and know that the administrative pay exceeds the academic pay significantly. But the other key topic of discussion should be the bloat of administrative positions. The ratio of administrative employees to students, and the ratio of administrative employees to academic employees has skyrocketed over the years. It makes sense just like it makes sense that the federal government keeps expanding the number of employees. There are no controls nor disincentives for constraining the growth. Existing administrators build their bureaucracies without much challenge. Budgets need to be inflated every year to justify the ask for more.
The fix requires a change to the controls and incentives. However, it seems that one party in our two party political system is completely resistant to those changes as the large number of employees in the education system feeds its campaigns.
I do not think comparisons such as what a poet can teach compared to what a doctor can teach should be done on the basis of $ worth. Learning has value but should it be/can it be monetized? It is true that in our current system, everything (and I mean everything) is measured and then given a worth in $. But should it be? I am not sure why this struck me but it did. We keep viewing everything as though it is for sale or will give a return on investment. Seems like the $ market is controlling everything including our thinking. There may indeed be too many (counting) administrators but I think that glut of administrators is a natural result of a structure built on counting and $. I think education, like housing and food and healthcare needs to be protected from the total control of the market. We need to look at the structure that forces us to start ranking humans: Poets; doctors; lawyers; farmers and on and on. That is what markets do.
The brutal reality is that people that want to teach poetry need to have some other source of income to live at a basic, decent level (not be a "starving artist"). They need to be married to a high earner, or someone that is independently wealthy, or inherit a significant amount of money or property, or have a side gig or something like that.
Historically, public education, especially K-12, was able to limit costs by hiring young unmarried women who eventually aged out when they got married and had their own children. Then they were replaced by other young women that couldn't easily find better jobs. The education system had a good pool of low wage labor, some of which were very smart women that didn't have many other career choices besides teaching, nursing, etc.
Now, women continue working after getting married and having children, and many school districts pay lavish salaries to affluent teachers (mostly women) that were able to get graduate degrees, by mid and late career.
I know of a suburban K-12 school district in a relatively affordable mid-sized city in northern california (not the bay area, not LA region) that pays senior teachers with grad degrees $90,000/year, with awesome retirement, medical, etc. Some schools in affluent neighborhoods, where parents DEMAND the "best" teachers have parking lots that are half full of luxury SUVs that the well paid senior teachers with graduate degrees drove to work.
The starving poetry teacher (an adjunct?) in New Jersey made distinct education and career choices that have consequences.
Even with a 14% raise, the low-wage adjunct poetry teacher still isn't going to raise themselves out of poverty. If the strike gets them medical benefits that could be a greater improvement, which is a good idea (especially if faux "diversity" jobs, grifter positions, are eliminated to cover the costs).
A number of cliches come to mind reading this. However, suffice to say that yours is the reactionary argument of the socialist egalitarian. While I agree that in a market economy some positions/careers are over-valued and under-valued with respect to society benefits, the same is true in any regime. The pursuit of perfection in this case is the enemy of the good. A market based system of paying people for job skills based on market supply and demand is severely flawed except compared to every other system.
My two sons are artistic right-brained. They will generally lead lives less economically successful than the children of our friends owning strong nerdy left dominate brains. However, my sons did figure out that they have to have marketable job skills to make a reasonable living, and pursue their art as a side hustle. And maybe one day their art skills will sustain their economic lives. But they are good with the side hustle.
bloated admin in higher education just needs to be (mostly) burned to the ground, it is corrupt neo-communism that is impossible to reform.
you are correct that these labor-activist appeals are garbled and nonsensical, undermining the credibility of the appeal, I have seen many of the same kind of nonsense, mixing facts and emotional-subjective victim narratives, for decades.
"teachers' unions" are pustules of "woke" nonsense.
"It makes sense just like it makes sense that the federal government keeps expanding the number of employees. There are no controls nor disincentives for constraining the growth."
Frank Lee
True. But it only makes sense in the fact that there nothing to constrain debt spending (similar to continual unpaid, credit card spending) at the Federal Government level. This is why a federal balanced budget amendment is vital to being on the Congressional agenda and passed as soon as possible. This debt spending trickles down to universities in large amounts. Just as the oligarch class have purchased government officials (with tax money, mind you), so too have they purchased large universities (with tax money). If we outlawed tax money to be secured by Universities under the auspicious of dubious grants and subsidies, then the bloated salaries and staffs of university administrators would NOT continue to grow either. Personally, if a University wants to exist on the income terms of their tuition and private endowments, then I couldn't care less how they operate-- or what they pay anyone on their staff. It's always your choice to work for them; or to go to school there. But, again,, when tax money is being used to prop up these obscenities (such as outlined by Chris), that should be outlawed immediately. Its up to the taxpayer to demand that of their representatives. If they continue to ignore the responsibility to demand that accountability, then there is no purpose in complaining about it. Unfortunately, this is all Chris does in his article. Striking is NOT demanding tax payer accountability. It just plays into the private institution hoax these universities are foisting upon the taxpayer. If you really think about it, then I believe you have to come to the conclusion that it reinforces and perpetuates these obscene practices.
The picket lines should be forming outside government officials and representatives offices, not university doorsteps.
yep. the labor movement (such as it is) got in bed with Clintons-Obama-Biden who got in bed with neoliberalism/corporatism and they ABORTED "progressive" (or any) actual reforms.
ridiculous partisan tribalism
endless "woke" GRIFTS