Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

Part-Time Professors Demand Higher Pay; Will Colleges Listen?

 

 

When you think about minimum-wage workers, college professors don't readily come to mind. But many say that's what they are these days.

 

Of all college instructors, 76 percent, or over 1 million, teach part time because institutions save a lot of money when they replace full-time, tenured faculty with itinerant teachers, better known as adjuncts.

 

Kathleen Gallagher, a published poet and writer with advanced studies and a master's degree, spent 20 years as an adjunct English professor at several colleges in Akron, Ohio. The most she's ever made in a year is $21,000; last year, she made $17,000.

 

After one college laid her off last summer, Gallagher was desperately short of money, so she sold her plasma.

 

"It is embarrassing to talk on the radio and say, 'I think I'll have to go give some blood,' " she says with a sigh. "But I needed gasoline."

 

She's thought about doing something else for a living.

 

"I have applied for other work," she says. "I had interviews, but then I remembered what I feel like in the classroom."

 

Gallagher tears up. She says teaching is her life, her calling. She's always assumed that eventually, a college somewhere would offer her a full-time professorship, but that just doesn't happen as often anymore.

 

There's a good reason for that, says Rex Ramsier, vice provost at the University of Akron, where Gallagher is teaching one class.

 

"Institutions have to be very mindful that if we simply tried to staff every course with full-time faculty that have full benefits, the cost of higher education at any institution would go up 30 to 40 percent potentially," he says. "The public's not going to accept that."

 

More than half the faculty at the University of Akron teaches part time. Ramsier says he's sorry some adjuncts are struggling, but they know, or should know, what they're getting into.

 

"Part-time work is truly part-time work," he says. "We're not expecting, or trying, to take advantage of people."

 

Two-year and four-year colleges started replacing full-time faculty with part-time instructors in the mid-1970s. That shift has created lots of tension on college campuses where adjuncts are treated like cheap labor, according to a congressional report released last month.

 

Initially, part-time teachers were popular because they brought "real-world experience" to the classroom, according to Adrianna Kezar, an expert on workforce issues in higher education and a professor at the University of Southern California. She says things are different today.

 

"Higher education has begun to adopt corporate management practices," Kezar says. "Corporations move to more contingent labor because it is a cheaper form of labor."

 

It's certainly cheaper, though the amount depends on the size of the institution and whether it's public or private. A full-time professor's salary can average from $72,000 a year up to $160,000; adjuncts average $25,000 to $27,000 a year, and often much less, regardless of where they teach.

 

'We Have To Stop Hiding In The Shadows'

 

At Cuyahoga Community College, just outside Cleveland, 3 out of 4 faculty members are adjuncts, like David Wilder. Now in his late 50s, he has a degree in library sciences and has taught art history at Cuyahoga for 10 years, and 15 years at another school. Despite that, he lives paycheck to paycheck and moonlights in the deli of a nearby hotel. He says the professors are just minimum-wage workers.

 

"We're just part of working people starting to step forward," Wilder says. "We identify with the fast-food workers that are telling their stories, and we want to do the same."

 

Some adjuncts here are on food stamps; others struggle to make their car or rent payments.

 

On a recent day, Wilder and a few colleagues set up a table in the student union to share their stories. One of those with him was Maria Maisto, also an adjunct at Cuyahoga and president of New Faculty Majority, a national support group that's been lobbying for more pay, health insurance, job security and better working conditions.

 

"We have to stop hiding in the shadows," Maisto said. "We have to not be ashamed to tell our stories."

 

She says adjuncts here get about $8 an hour. A tall gangly man approached her, pecked at the calculator on his smartphone, and said Maisto's figures were wrong. That was Rudy Stralka, a well-regarded, full-time, tenured business professor at Cuyahoga. He says adjuncts make $22 to $23 an hour, and if you do the math, adjuncts are paid fairly — $160 per class in Maisto's case.

 

Maisto said she teaches one class that meets for three hours a week; Stralka said that's $26 an hour.

 

But that's not the case if you count the extra hours outside the classroom that adjuncts are not paid for, said Maisto. Those include preparing for class, grading papers, advising students — part-time professors absolutely get no more than $8 an hour, she says. Stralka wasn't convinced, but he said even if adjuncts are right, their message is falling on deaf ears.

 

"This is nice: We have an educational table, we talk to people — that's all nice, but it's not going to do a damn thing," Stralka said. "If you really want to do something, you have to get the petitions out and you gotta change the law. You have to get organized, otherwise this is an exercise in futility."

 

Maisto and her colleagues disagree; they say they've never been more organized. Nationally, about 22 percent of part-time professors belong to a union, according to Maisto. But in the past few years, there's been a spike in the number of colleges and universities that recognize adjuncts' collective bargaining rights.

 

 

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/03/268427156/part-time-professors-demand-higher-pay-will-colleges-listen?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook

[dean]

How long will it take for colleges to hire Chinese instructors? After all, all other U.S. Jobs are going to the Chinese.

[Plainsdrifter]

It will be a while before that happens, there seems to be a few obstacles with mastering the English language first.

[cavanami]

I had a Chinese professor...who could not speak any English! The rule was, he wrote on the chalk board and that's what

you would be tested on. No after hour questions at his office, no extra help, we just got a buzz off all the chalk dust.

 

Then there was the Indian professor...no one could understand their English...but the USA was being sooooo PC....

[Flashermac]

Talking about being PC, when I was a US Army instructor in the early 1990s, Israeli and Taiwanese military students were forbidden to wear their uniform on post. Everyone knew who they were, but they had to dress in civilian clothes.

 

(There was a world of difference between the Israeli and Saudi officers. The Israelis would study hard, taking everything apart and putting it back together so that it worked better than before. The Saudis would sit there and do nothing, insisting that officers don't do manual work. That was an enlisted man's job. Officers just told people what to do. Most of the Saudis in my class couldn't even speak English. A dapper little UK educated captain from Aden had to translate for them.)

[radioman]

There's a good article written by a US military man about why Arabs cannot win wars, or do much at all in fact, though he focuses on the military angle much of what he says is very transferable. I'll dig it out.

[radioman]

http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

 

Easier to re-find than I thought.

[BelgianBoy]

http://www.meforum.o...arabs-lose-wars

 

Easier to re-find than I thought.

thanks radioguy

[unit731]

http://www.meforum.o...arabs-lose-wars

 

Easier to re-find than I thought.

 

 

Good read.

[Flashermac]

Cop handcuffs on-duty firefighter for not moving truck

 

 

Good thing it was caught on camera, or it would be tough to believe: A California Highway Patrol officer put an on-duty Chula Vista firefighter in handcuffs for refusing to move his truck while tending to victims of a car crash.

 

As he was being handcuffed on the side of the 805 Freeway near Orange County, the firefighter, 12-year veteran Jacob Gregoire, told reporters who had gathered, "I just want to let you all know he’s arresting me."

 

Later, according to CBS News 8, Gregoire told the arresting officer, whose name has not been released, "It’s unbelievable you guys have to treat us like this. We are trying to help you guys."

 

The officer replied, "We asked you to clear the road, you said ‘No.’ You are being arrested for not moving."

 

Gregoire was reportedly detained in the back of a highway patrol car for several minutes before being released. He was not charged.

 

Chula Vista Fire Chief Dave Hanneman told CBS, "To detain one of our firefighters in the middle of an incident is ridiculous."

 

In a statement, Hanneman praised the firefighters for doing what they were trained to do — protecting the scene of an accident with their trucks.

 

Hanneman told the San Diego Union-Tribune, "The CHP is going to investigate. I think a lot of this had to do with communication."

 

The Union-Tribune reports the car accident resulted in two injuries. One person was hospitalized.

 

The two sides have since made peace. In a joint statement, representatives from the police and fire departments announced this was an "isolated incident and not representative of the manner in which our agencies normally work together toward our common goal," CBS Los Angeles reported.

 

 

https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/cop-arrests-on-duty-firefighter-over-parking-feud-150128011.html?vp=1