The Pissed Off Professor

Like I said yesterday, the issue of equal pay for equal work in the collegiate teaching sphere is a subject that deserves a great deal of attention.

I’ll start with a few basics.

For those of you who are not aware of this—and I am willing to bet most people are not aware of this—by virtue of my being an adjunct faculty member (as opposed to a full-time faculty member), I make about 50% less per hour than an equally trained and equally experienced full-timer makes.

I say me, but you can take my case as representing the average part-timer at any college.

If I were to be hired as a full-timer today, when I walked into my classroom tomorrow, I would have the same duties to my students, the same obligations to my course, and I would spend the same amount of time teaching as I did Monday; however, when I walked into class on tomorrow, I’d earn 50% more money simply by virtue of a change in my employment status.

I know, some of you are thinking that’s the way of the working world, and to a certain extent, you are correct.

But you know how important careful analysis is to me, so let’s pull this apart a bit more.

Let’s consider a single class and how it works.

A class is opened for enrollment, and students sign up for it. When they sign up, they agree to pay a fee for the course. That fee covers a variety of things, but in essence, it offsets the cost of running the class. In return for that fee, students are given the opportunity to learn the presented course content and received credit for it if they pass.

Whether it is me or a full-timer who is assigned to teach a class, the content, the requirements, and the delivery methods are the same. The fee the students pay is the same, and the credit the students earn is the same.

It costs the school less money for me to teach the class, but the product and what they charge for it is no different.

Most students are completely unaware of whether the instructor for whom they have signed up is full-time or part-time, and while they might not care, it seems like someone who is only worth half of the pay as is someone else might be less able to perform the job task. It would seem that this difference would be a thing a school would be required to disclose to its students; after all, the students are paying for a service.

This is the it-takes-place-right-here-in-America equivalent of outsourcing and/or sweatshop labor.

Keep in mind that as an adjunct faculty member, I am required to have the same education and the same skills as is required of my full-time counterparts.

I am not supervised while I teach.

I do not have to run my ideas by a superior.

I am not on any kind of probation.

This is not at all like most of the working world.

In most of the working world, education, job experience, and overall performance make up the bulk of the determining factors in one’s pay rate. In almost any skilled profession, one’s status as a part-time employee prohibits one from performing certain tasks; however, I am doing exactly what a full-timer does in every respect when I teach.

It is what is required of me—I don’t just do more than the average part-timer because I am better at my job or because I care more about it.

I am not an intern.

I am not an understudy.

I am not a trainee.

I have my BA and my MA and 8 years of teaching experience under my belt; however, the newest full-timer in my department (BA and MA in hand) has only an internship behind him, and when he steps to the front of the room to teach, by virtue of his employment status, he makes 40% more than I do. (He’ll get that extra 10% after he teaches a bit longer.)

Now, I am not saying he isn’t as qualified as me, but I am certainly saying I deserve to earn more than 60% of his wage: I deserve to be paid the same rate as he is paid for doing the same work as he does.

If I am not worth the same amount of money as an instructor, then certainly, students should receive a discount for attending one of my classes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Classification, College, Education, English, Narration, Students, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.