Comment by intern4tional | Hacker News Reader

Comment by intern4tional | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I work part time as an adjunct at a local 4 year college in WA state and am paid a flat fee of $150 a student per class. For one of my higher level (400 level) courses, I have 4-5 students usually and prep work to keep the course current still requires at least 2-3 hours a week in addition to teaching class.

At the end of the day, I make less than minimum wage teaching these students. I'm lucky that I have another job that supports me.

Colleges and Universities are not lean organizations. My department has significant amounts of overhead - people that in some cases work full time doing administrivia or extra paperwork and they require a salary. The buildings and labs also require upkeep and technology has a fairly high turnover cost. Add in the racket that is software + books and things add up quickly.

I'd estimate that my department has almost a 1 to 1 back office staff to professor ratio - simply due to the lack of automation (and no desire to automate) many portions of the work that is done at the school. Many of the back office staff are full time and they receive a regular salary rather than a flat fee per student.

At the Univ. of California system, the number of 'student-facing' employees (from grad-students to professors to janitors and groundskeepers, basically anyone that could maybe have their face shown to a student) is 1:2 versus the rest of the staff. Guess who screams louder about HR, benefits, and other stuff? (Sorry, I can't find the source for this though, quick googling came up with nothing)

EDIT: Another unrelated anecdote: I was recently talking to a PI at Rice's Engineering program who had just finished up his spring class. He got rave reviews of the class, all the undergrads really liked it. About a week after the class reports came out, his director came to him and told him that he was teaching too well and that he should be spending more time on writing grants. If his classes liked him that much again, he would be disciplined (I've no idea how, but he was nontenured, so it sacred him enough). He then taught a 'worse' class in the fall. Whatever those students are paying for, it sure is not the education.

Grants are the most significant revenue source for a department. These are research institutions, teaching is a side effect and the thinking is that "the students are lucky for the opportunity" :)

> Add in the racket that is software + books and things add up quickly.

Don't students have to pay for software and books? Where I went to school the library didn't stock any textbooks, and there was an extra per-credit hour "technology fee" slapped on to the regular tuition? You'd think the "technology fee" would cover all required software, but it only really paid for things like Microsoft Office, Peoplesoft, etc. Specialized software had to be bought separately (glares at Adbobe) at the student's expense.

What ticks me off at my University is the $100 per semester athletic fee, but that doesn't include use of any athletic things. Still costs $85 per month to use the weight room

> Add in the racket that is software + books and things add up quickly.

Don't students pay for those separately? How does that add up for costs on the school's end?

Books held in the library, and computer/library labs with the paid software available, I'd imagine

That explains some of the cost structure of an education institution, but:

The real reason the adjunct-professor position pays so low is because that's the value applicants are willing to accept / that's the cake society assigns.

If that class of employee demanded, or held more prestige, we would see efficiency gains elsewhere in the business.

Not quite. The real question is why are these adjuncts being paid so little? It could be that for many adjuncts the desire to be there forces them to accept whatever pay. It could be a desire to teach for the sake of it or it could be a lack of options. But also, why do colleges pay their student facing employees so little? They probably don’t have incentive to increase pay and they deginitely want to cut costs.

This is why they want to unionize. Ironically, the tenure track and tenured professors are unionized as part of that institution's academic senate. Adjunct professorships probably arose out of the "postdoc" path, as well as being an academic association for industry collaborators. So temporary in nature. But the reality is different. Better off teaching K-12 at least they have a union.

It could be that unionization keeping pay down or contributing to it. It makes the unionization more valuable for incombants and keeps out competition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com