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Comment by Sirened | Hacker News Reader

It's sad to hear that Fox's is leaving Berkeley. I've heard only wonderful things about her from her course staff and students. It's awful that the university cannot pay its talented faculty enough to keep them from leaving for financial reasons and worse that they can't muster a healthy academic culture that respects all their faculty equally, whether they're tenure track, adjunct, or tenured. Best of luck in industry, it's probably the right move but I'm sure you will be dearly missed!

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Same here, from both interns we've had who took a class of hers..

It's eye-opening that the salary of an adjunct faculty member at Cal with 100% appointment with classes taught to 1.5K+ students (CS61A) is less than the tuition fees of 8 students.

This is the primary drawback of unions, no? The most talented workers leave to self-negotiate better salaries elsewhere and the company can’t do anything about it.

At least that’s what I got from the article. Weird for a university professor to blame a union.

I don’t think universities care whether their adjuncts are the most talented. Basically the entire point of the role these days is to undercut the cost of getting tenured faculty to teach classes. Given that backdrop I was honestly surprised to see the salary was as high as it was

That is almost certainly the union's doing. Unions help push back against the downward pressure on wages from employers (who are passing on the downard pressure from investors and the public).

The same thing happens at the vast majority of US universities whose faculty aren’t unionized. In fact, per [0], the two thirds of adjuncts make under $50,000 which is less than half what the union negotiated.

[0]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/20/new-report-sa...

OK, but roughly 100% of the US has lower living costs than Berkeley too. $50,000 (especially with solid benefits) is a middle-class salary in most places.

Without union, i can nearly guarantee she will earn less, work more and probably have no health benefits

The salary is as high as it is in part due to the Union -- but the UC starting salary for lecturers regardless of discipline and location is around $60K. But computer science is in a roughly better position because a few tenured faculty advocated for higher wages so they could actually make hires. Still multiple people are leaving because the workload/stress/salary are out of alignment.

Supply, meet demand. There are lots of people who want to teach part time for the title and even more who desperately cling to the hope they’ll be able to get a tenure track job after being told they won’t, for many years.

I don't think that's the whole story here. It's also that universities don't tend to value teaching, and won't pay good teachers the same that they pay good researchers. That's not market dynamics, that's a cultural decision around where to allocate resources.

It is also a financial decision, good researchers can pull in large grants, providing the school lots of money.

It absolutely is market dynamics, i.e. supply & demand.

It's absolutely market forces.

Research output determines rankings. Teaching quality doesn't.

It's definitely not just supply-demand. The application pool for lecturers are places like Berkeley is much smaller than you think, when you start filtering for qualified folks.

Now, at least some of this is academia having too strong of a filter, but the year I joined Berkeley - I was 1 of 4 to accept the offer.

That speaks more poorly of the indefensibly high tuition.

And the fact that Student EDUCATION FUNDING shouldnt necessarly be classified as a "LOAN"

It should be an INVESTMENT into the educational institution on the MERIT and VALUE of the degree taught and received.

Thus: If I am lured into an educational track which promises a market level pay/industry-pertinent-education which makes one employable in said field, but results in NOT... the institution should be liable for such and the investment/"tuition" should be negated and a "write-off" to the school.

That's the same as saying:

"Pay me $100 to teach you how to fight!" Gets ass kicked. "You still owe me $100 for TEACHING you how to fight."

People don't value the things they get for free. Consider how little people value public high school.

I doubt you'll find many people that have side jobs during college to defray costs are partying their way through.

>>If I am lured into an educational track which promises a market level pay/industry-pertinent-education which makes one employable in said field, but results in NOT... the institution should be liable for such and the investment/"tuition" should be negated and a "write-off" to the school.

(Trump.edu anyone?)

> worse that they can't muster a healthy academic culture that respects all their faculty equally, whether they're tenure track, adjunct, or tenured.

Saying things like this is a real disservice to the kinds of people who waste years and decades of their lives trying to return to academia after being rejected. Deliberate gestures of inclusiveness encourage people to keep hoping long past all reason.

Yes, that's fair--this was an unhelpful and uncharitable thing to say. Many faculty do certainly work hard on this

You have misinterpreted my point. Gestures of inclusiveness to adjunct “faculty” are bad because they aren’t faculty and will never be treated as such. Treating the unfortunates who do those jobs in the hope of becoming academics better is good for them but bad overall because it encourages applications for jobs like that which are only suitable for those of independent means or who have supportive families/spouses.

> My salary as a Unit-18 lecturer with a 100% appointment was about 100K annual compensation until our union's strike and new contract brought it to be about 107K.

I cannot muster a lot of sympathy for people choosing between 6 figure careers.

It's not reasonable to expect a university to be able to match rates of one of the highest paying careers in industry. If universities try to match industry costs for all of their employees, those costs will just be passed on to graduates in the form of more student debt, which is already enough of a crisis.

She should take the higher paying opportunities available to her, and the university should find someone who is happy with what they can afford for the position.

> It's not reasonable to expect a university to be able to match rates of one of the highest paying careers in industry. If universities try to match industry costs for all of their employees, those costs will just be passed on to graduates in the form of more student debt, which is already enough of a crisis.

This may be true for lesser colleges, but Berkeley has a 4.8 billion dollar endowment and is teaching some of our brightest minds. They can eat the cost.

It's also worth noting that 6 figure salaries don't go nearly so far in the Bay Area. Food, rent, and services are more expensive here than in most of the state, and taxes are higher than in most of the country. A rough estimate, I'd put this salary as equivalent to 65-70k somewhere like Boise, Idaho.

>Berkeley has a 4.8 billion dollar endowment

Endowments are not simply a pool of money sitting around spendable on anything. They are generally composed of thousands and thousands of donations, each with specific requirements for that donation. Some may be scholarships, some to fund specific research projects, some to specific departments or groups (and again with strings attached).

A better indicator of is the salary reasonable, is are there ample job applicants for the positions? If people choose this position over all their other options than this pay is market clearing, paying more is simply taking money from other productive uses.

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