Jerry Falwell met with Donald Trump in New York City to discuss education issues.
“Falwell said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the U.S. Department of Education. He would not confirm or rule out whether he was being vetted as secretary of education but is confident after the meeting with the president-elect and “some of his top advisers” that he would work with the administration….
“Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this week higher education has to “get back to the basics of teaching” and eschew the “ivory tower” mentality that has led to “salaries that are out of this world.”
“In public K-12 education, Falwell told the newspaper, school vouchers could “transform the country and the inner cities” by giving parents an educational choice that provides “a whole generation of young people a new lease on life.”
“Falwell has said an early point of agreement between he and Trump came when the then-candidate said he wanted to repeal the “Johnson Amendment,” a part of the tax code prohibiting tax-exempt organizations, such as Liberty University, from supporting or opposing political candidates.
“While Falwell and Trump argued the law is a hindrance on free speech, opponents say removing it could turn certain nonprofits and churches into political action committees and deepen concerns over the power of money in politics.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a shame that no one on Trump’s ed reform team is interested in talking to anyone who works for or attends a US public school.
Odd, right? We’ll have an entire team of publicly-paid employees with zero interest in US public schools.
Ed reform seems to have gotten so extremely innovative and cage-busting they skip public schools completely! 🙂
“Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this week higher education has to “get back to the basics of teaching” and eschew the “ivory tower” mentality that has led to “salaries that are out of this world.”
Add this to the list of memes that get repeated so often they are assured to be true .
Three quarters starving adjuncts with salaries that the Nuns wouldn’t settle for.
assumed to be true
You beat me to it Joel, I was also going to mention adjunct professors who get paid Walmart wages with no benefits. What an upside down world we live in.
https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24
Really? Again…
Not really Walmart wages – unless you talk about management.
Rudy,
About 70% of professors are adjuncts. They are paid per class, often as little as $3,000 per course. Multiply that by five and that’s poverty wages.
Is Falwell concerned about coaches’ salaries?
In North Carolina community colleges, adjuncts are paid about $1500 for a 3-credit hour course. So, 48 hours in the classroom, prep time, grading, and administrative work such as turning in grades get you $1500. That’s not a good wage.
Is he implying that teacher salaries are out of this world? If he is, does he think that vouchers to religious schools will save monies, and, perhaps nuns should return to teaching in parochial schools and stay at home moms can teach in private schools so they don’t get paid at all? I don’t understand.
I think the salary comment was directed at higher education and not K-12.
In voucherized America, say farewell (or Falwell) to a shared set of facts. The Christian schools will be Christianist madrassas –they’ll learn nothing about Muslims except that they’re demons. They’ll learn that Catholics are pagans. They’ll learn that God created each species, and that God loves America best. That climate change is a hoax and gays are sinners.
The sad thing is that these lies are only weakly contested by our current public schools. Deweyian anti-fact philosophy plus decades of NCLB pushing skills over knowledge has depleted the curriculum of robust fact-transmission. This has set the stage for the triumph of fake news and our collective inability to recognize the second coming of Hitler.
It is not the job of public schools to “contest” conservative Christian doctrine, and I am lucky enough to live in an area where the curriculum has not been stripped of content. I do remember a number of years ago when a prominent Holocaust denier attempted to influence the excellent unit that was presented to the eighth graders in our local school system. His child, of course, was not required to participate, but he garnered quite a bit of local media coverage of his Holocaust denial meme. My daughter did have a “friend” who was a member of a local conservative Christian church. She told her circle of “friends” that they were all going to Hell because they weren’t born again Christians. They didn’t seem to mind her indictment and continued to include her in their social activities, and she went to the public schools.
Am I contesting Christian doctrine when I teach about evolution as a fact, about the Big Bang Theory as the origin of the universe? How about when I teach about climate change, the age of the Earth, the extinction of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago?
I’m teaching earth science, and if the facts refute Christain doctrine so rbe it. It is not my aim to do that, but if it happens and causes one of my students to question their faith that is an unfortunate side effect of gaining 21st century learning skills, problem solving, and critical thinking. Perhaps by questioning their faith it will, in the end, become stronger.
This notion of protecting our youth from ideas that may be upsetting to them is deeply troubling and IMO, should be resisted by educators at all levels, everywhere.
Science is based on the concept of repeatable experiments with the same outcome.
Evolution is NOT science, it’s a collection of accidents (according to Dawkins et al)… sonyrs, you would do well to teach your students to question the validity.
Your narrow definition of “science” may allow you to file evolution under the category of non-science or accident, but to the vast majority of scientists and those who teach science, evolution is a rugged, consistent, and comprehensive scientific theory that is supported by many of the other sciences (physics, chemistry, geology, genetics, medicine, etc). That’s why it is accepted as fact, or at least until someone comes up with another equally rigorous theory explaining the path of life on our planet.
And to your key point about science…evolution is testable, has repeatable results, and consistently comes up with the same or similar outcomes.
I guess you and Dawkins disagree, as would jay Gould.
They explain evolution as a series of accidents – which cannot be repeated with the exact same outcome.
The definition of science came from a publication by the AAAS.
My point exactly, however poorly made.
In re-reading your comment I see My understanding was in error and I responded perhaps too quickly.
My apologies. It’s a touchy subject with me, as I address it nearly every year with a parent or two, usually requesting their child be taken out of my class for the duration of my heretical instruction. Luckily my administration and district totally support me (and my fellow science teachers) in our efforts towards science literacy.
I appreciate your apology, and I totally understand. I have been guilty of the same “sin” on more than one occasion.
ponderosa:
“In voucherized America, say farewell (or Falwell) to a shared set of facts.”
“Deweyian anti-fact philosophy plus decades of NCLB pushing skills over knowledge has depleted the curriculum of robust fact-transmission.”
You really don’t know much about John Dewey, do you? He wasn’t “anti-fact” at all. As an empiricist, pragmatist philosopher, and educational theorist, he was deeply concerned with facts–including the facts one learns from direct experience as well as newly encountered facts that, when reflected upon and discussed with others, reshape our understanding of the world.
And the idea of a mandatory set of shared facts for all Americans is questionable. When I was a kid, I learned that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. Everybody did. But that “shared fact” isn’t really a fact, because no part of that statement is actually true.
Here’s what E. D. Hirsch has to say about shared facts in his book The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What every American Needs to Know (written with Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil:
“Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, thought that the chief staple of education should be facts, facts, facts. We take a different view. Although we think facts are important (see the scientific sections of this dictionary), we also think educated people must know myths, myths, myths. It isn’t clear whether the myth of George Washington and the Cherry Tree belongs in a course on history or one on mythology, but from the standpoint of literacy it doesn’t matter. For purposes of communication and solidarity in a culture, myths are just as important as history. And unless history achieves the vividness and memorableness of myth, it will not be very useful to shared culture. We should indeed try to discriminate between history and myth; but true or false, the stories that we share provide us with our values, goals, and traditions. The tales we tell our children define what kind of people we shall be.”
Instead of encouraging students and teachers to search for truth, Hirsch and his co-authors explicitly advocate the perpetuation of myth. Not for the purpose of studying those myths, but for children to believe them. The cultural traditions transmitted in this way may be full of inaccuracies and erroneous assumptions and biases of all kinds. But hey, that’s our culture, so perpetuate it we should.
As I’ve stated before, I don’t think the uncritical transmission of received knowledge is a good thing. But that’s Hirsch’s project in a nutshell.
Teachers ought to consider a child’s age and developmental level before confusing them with ambivalence, ambiguity, nuance, and so forth. But by the time they reach middle school, we’d better let them know that knowledge, including factual knowledge, is subject to interpretation and revision.
To Randall: From your Hirsch quote: “We should indeed try to discriminate between history and myth; but true or false, the stories that we share provide us with our values, goals, and traditions. The tales we tell our children define what kind of people we shall be.”
Then you say: “Instead of encouraging students and teachers to search for truth, Hirsch and his co-authors explicitly advocate the perpetuation of myth.”
I didn’t read the quote that way. As example, George Washington’s story was a moral tale about telling the truth about getting into mischief. Such “stories” we share in our tradition provide children with examples of “values, goals, traditions.” that’s not the same thing as as “perpetuation of myth” where myth is juxtaposed to truth in a negative sense. And Hirsch explicitly says to discriminate between history and myth.
I don’t agree with everything Hirsch says; however, he is right if I understand him correctly that the human mind and spirit are big enough to encompass many ways of increasing our understanding and growing “what kind of people we shall be.”
I think it is a good thing to learn myths. Greek myths, Roman myths, American myths, Norse myths, African myths.
As Bruno Bettelheim wrote many years ago in a classic work on fairy tales (“The Uses of Enchantment”), these stories convey moral messages.
No one thinks they are history. Except for Biblical myths.
Diane: Yes: I remember well Bruno Bettleheim’s “The Uses of Enchantment” — remarkable.
to Randall: One way to identify the distinction Hirsch refers to is to regard truth as critical-factual, like Caesar crossed the Rubicon is true by all accounts, and great moral and spiritual truths, which we use to govern our living. There was no superman, Santa Claus (sorry), or Katy Keen, but I learned so much from them when I was a child about how to be a person (even though I fail a lot).
Sorry, I didn’t make a proper distinction between myth defined as a commonly held falsehood or inaccuracy and myth defined as a traditional story that may embody pyschological truths and cultural beliefs.
Hirsch’s book says, “It isn’t clear whether the myth of George Washington and the Cherry Tree belongs in a course on history or one on mythology, but from the standpoint of literacy it doesn’t matter.” I think it is pretty clear, and it does matter. From what I understand, the Parson Weems version of George Washington was, to an extent, fabricated to promote a particular political and cultural agenda. That doesn’t mean Washington wasn’t a great man or a great President. But the Hirsch approach calls for the transmission of a commonly accepted set of beliefs that, by and large, aren’t to be questioned.
America is a young enough culture that historians can actually discover how some commonly held beliefs may actually have originated as propaganda. The version of history I received in elementary school and even high school was tainted in this way. My fourth grade history text had a long chapter that presented Sam Houston as one of the great founders of the nation, and glorified the Texas Republic. I don’t remember the complex issues of slavery expansion being addressed. It wasn’t until decades later that I learned that school textbooks were tailor made for the Texas and California markets. The same textbook presented Andrew Jackson as a great hero of the common people. That’s not the version of history you find in Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States. There the various myths (by either definition) associated with the American West and Westward Expansion get close scrutiny.
Here’s Hirsch’s condescending justification for presenting the dominant culture’s version of history, both “factual” and mythic:
“That is a good definition of literacy: the ability to communicate effectively with strangers. We help people in the underclass rise economically by teaching them how to communicate effectively beyond a narrow social sphere, and that can only be accomplished by teaching them shared, traditional literate culture. Thus the inherent conservatism of literacy leads to an unavoidable paradox: the social goals of liberalism require educational conservatism. We only make social progress by teaching everyone to read and communicate, which means teaching myths and facts that are predominantly traditional.”
So it’s as much about conservative ideology as it is about student learning. His idea of communication only goes one way. It assumes that the dominant culture has the answers, and he gets to decide which myths and facts will be passed along. Where is Paolo Freire when we need him?
As for studying and teaching about myths in general, I’m all for it. I got hooked on mythology in third grade and later spent a lot of time teaching high school students about it. In recent years I’ve been studying myth-based storytelling. These are the most popular stories worldwide because they tap into the deepest human emotions and desires. Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, the Marvel universe, James Cameron’s Avatar, and a whole lot more.
It’s no wonder that people seeking power want to tap into existing mythologies and create their own. A responsible pedagogy would subject myths to critical inquiry instead of just transmitting them.
I zm so happy. A match made in heaven.
“Then came the election of Donald J. Trump as president. Stock prices of the companies still running for-profit colleges rose sharply. DeVry University shares rose 17 percent in the days after the election. The shares of the company that owns University of Phoenix, Apollo Education Group, the largest for-profit, increased 6 percent. Both are at a 52-week high. The broad S.&P. 500 index, by contrast, rose 1.3 percent in the days after the election.
Why are investors bullish on for-profits under Mr. Trump? Profits could be coming back.”
Let the looting of veterans and young people begin again!
Talk to the young people you know. Tell them not to get involved with these people. They’ll end up with mountains of debt and no value. It will ruin their lives. They will never be able to discharge the debt. They are on their own. No one is looking out for their interests.
FWIW – churches should stay out if politics altogether. Pulpits should not be opened for any kind of politician.
Just a thought.
Agree. If religion mixes with politics, politicans will control religion.
Let me help you with that thought.:
“in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Tell that to the priests who have been killed because of rising against the oppressors.
Tell that to the religious who have sacrificed their lives to protect those in their care.
Tell that to the rabbis and the ministers who were killed by Hitler’s death camps for standing up for the innocent.
Tell that to the Dutch reformed ministers who were killed for hiding Jewish families from nazis.
Sometimes the lack of knowledge among comments on this list seems to exemplify what you all are arguing against.
Critical thinking is not to be found from time to time.
I do not know of any non-believers or atheists who have made such sacrifices in such numbers and circumstances.
Huh? Thomas Jefferson was speaking in an age when church and state were not separate. do you need to be reminded of the abuses of such an arrangement? Joel’s focus, I believe, is on the separation of church and state. There is to be no church involvement in government. It has nothing to do with acts of heroism of people of faith.
“A theologian on the throne is a public danger.” –J. B. Bury
I’m amazed at the whole thing–and feel like I am watching a bad accident happen over and over again. But Falwell’s complaint about educators’ “out of this world salaries” made my head spin.
From the post: “Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this week higher education has to ‘get back to the basics of teaching’ and eschew the ‘ivory tower’ mentality that has led to ‘salaries that are out of this world.”
That’s the most incredibly ignorant statement I have heard since, . . .well,. . since Donald Trump last opened his mouth. I though Falwell kept in touch with his university and so knows (1) how much professors commonly make, even if they aren’t mere adjuncts; (2) how much effort it takes to get a PhD.; (3) what “course load” means; and (4) what the comparative compensations are for relative counterparts in the business or other professional communities. Incredible.
Really?
http://db.press-citizen.com/state-salaries/
Rudy: Yes, “really.” I forgot to mention how much it costs to get a PhD. BTW, do you have the stats for how many adjuncts are “used” in colleges and universities and who get paid circa $20.00 an hour, with lots of winks and nods about how much work is involved in a per course situation; and where you have no benefits and no guarantee of work from one course to the next. Let’s put those in and average them and it gets even worse.
But I’m really surprised someone close to education, as Falwell is, would even think of using a term like “ivory tower” to describe university education. It’s a misguided cliche’ unworthy of an educator not to mention that it feeds into the current movement to ignore science, to denigrate qualified theoretical work, and to bring down educational institutions or make them into corporate lackeys. Their problems are not about what he means by “ivory tower,” but, again, in the corporate squeeze that’s going forward in K-12 as we speak.
Did you actually LOOK at the numbers? 200,000 to 450,000 for a state college professor or associate?
I can guarantee you that their degrees don’t cost near as much as current degrees.
I happen to know a 30 yr old with a phd in physics, who at the time was teaching for a small private college. He was not making anything near that amount of money.
So yes, really? And then we wonder why kids cannot afford college anymore.
Nation wide:
https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24
Rudy: Perhaps I respect teachers and the work they do more than you.
You look at exceptions and make them the rule. I look st the bigger picture, and understand there will be exceptions on both ends. Iowa has one of the highest paid football coaches in the nation. At a time where students pay more for a degree than a house, that is something that makes no sense to anyone.
So when I hear someone complain about the “poor professors” and I see salaries for professors and associates ranging from 200,000 to 300,00 and up for the Iowa state colleges.
Rudy,
Read this: 70% of college professors are adjuncts making poverty wages per course
Not the case according to national reports.
I just looked again at the tables you posted. I didn’t see those $200,00 to $450,000 jobs for professors. You also didn’t respond to the question of the ration to tenure/tenure track positions to adjunct teaching positions.
Look at the Iowa list.
Colleges and universities have to cut costs. Benefits and all. Just like public schools.
Tuition can only go up so much. Taxes can only go up so much. Unions don’t seem to understand that and keep asking for more pay.
States have shifted the cost of higher education to families
That is fact
SOMEBODY somewhere has to pay the bills. I helped two kids through college so am well aware of the cost.
Iowa does not have enough rich people to rob As per Sanders and Clinton.
How can you justify the 200,000 – 300,000 salaries for professors and adjuncts?
Rudy,
Please, please, find an adjunct professor who is paid $200,000-$300,000 per year. Name him or her.
Did that. Check the sources I sent.
Rudy is right when he says: “SOMEBODY somewhere has to pay the bills.” I think the larger point is this: What is overlooked is the long-term and, in that term, providing quality higher education for all is what will continue to make and keep a culture a culture–as in intelligence, creativity, and culturing are fostered here–which is why college should be free or at least on a severely selective sliding scale: pragmatically, that means a realignment of taxes. Need I say where THAT is going now.
You can give up on the idea, however, that “professors are paid too much” in all but a few still-questionable situations. I don’t know your background; but I know enough people who haven’t spent one second in a university, but who hold really errant and culture-destructive ideas about them. And there’s no breaking into their bias with facts. These ignorant ideas are, in part, self-inflicted; and some are complements of a bunch of other short-sighted, anti-democratic, and power-hungry people. Some are well-meaning; and some are just mean spirited.
We are in a time when a lot of such people live in a variety of gated (ahem) thought-silos; have lot of money and power; and either think they know what they are doing regardless of serious questions raised against their thinking or, worse, don’t think at all but are driven merely by a sense of rapacious and totalitarian hubris or, in Fallwell’s case, he’s probably thinking in those terms, combined with a capitalist mindset (not education, democracy, or culture) combined with religious zeal. The idea that university professors are paid too much just feeds into that whole reductionist movement.
It’s the K-12 equivalent of higher education: teacher-bashing.
Talk to Iowa. Then go and investigate how administrative costs have risen over the past few decades. Stop picking outliers to try to prove your point. I agree with your contention that college has gotten way too expensive. I am still paying off college loans for my kids and the last one graduated almost ten years ago. All four of them are paying off loans as well.
Want to look at California? North east? Illinois? Texas?
California – LA Community College
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/los-angeles-district/
Interesting numbers, too!
Texas –
https://www.texastribune.org/2010/10/19/community-colleges-added-to-salary-database/
Illinois
FULL-TIME FACULTY AND CIVIL SERVICE SALARIES AT ILLINOIS
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Highlights
In fiscal year 2012, the weighted average salary of $79,700 at Illinois public universities
was 93.8 percent of the median salary of comparison group institutions, up slightly from
the previous four fiscal years.
Faculty salaries at Illinois community colleges averaged $69,200 annually in fiscal year
2012. The weighted average faculty salary at Illinois community colleges exceeded the
median of average salaries at community colleges in selected states for all years
examined, increasing from 107.5 percent in fiscal year 2008 to 113.6 percent in fiscal
year 2012.
The weighted average annual faculty salary of independent institutions in Illinois
averaged $98,400 in fiscal year 2012, or 107.6 percent of comparison group institutions.
Salaries of civil service staff at Illinois higher education institutions and agencies rose
8.6 percent between fiscal years 2008 and 2012 to a statewide average of $44,694.
In fiscal year 2012, the average cost of fringe benefits per faculty member at Illinois
public universities was $24,800. When faculty salary costs are combined with fringe
benefit costs, total faculty compensation at public universities averaged $104,500.
In fiscal year 2011, the average cost of fringe benefits per faculty member at Illinois
community colleges was $19,700. However, fringe benefits provided at individual
community colleges vary widely across the state, ranging from a low of $11,900 per
faculty member to a high of $29,900
New York:
http://www1.salary.com/NY/Professor-History-salary.html
No, in this case where we are interested in trends, we need to look at NATIONAL data. Only then do we take that information back to our own states, our own communities and compare local institutions to that meta data. Then we can start digging down and start asking questions about what is driving costs in individual institutions.
Why would I look at Iowa? It is not even close to representative of the U.S. They must make a h*** of a lot off their sports teams!
Why should I not look at Iowa? Apart from that, the other reference was to a national list.
And btw, that is precisely a reason why the electoral college exists – representation of the smaller states.
What the heck does the cost of college have to do with the electoral college? The influence of small states on the overall average of the cost of college? H-m-m-m, since Iowa seems to be an outlier on the high end, then it is skewing national figures on public colleges higher…unless of course, another state balances it on the low end. Oh wait, that means we should look at national figures and look at median salaries for faculty and administration rather than just averages. Perhaps we should compare the growth of types of positions? Rumor has it that management types are hemorrhaging out the windows of institutions of higher learning.
Rudy Schellekens
Please Rudy watch out for the radio waves Your numbers are so off the mark that a supermarket tabloid would hesitate to publish them.
So here are some real figures Keep in mind this only applies to the fortunate full time faculty ..
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/09/aaup-releases-faculty-salary-data.
Michio Kaku CUNY Salary Perhaps he is giving them a discount .
http://state-employees.findthedata.com/d/a/Michio-Kaku
So there’s is a reputable newspaper but you consider it worthless because you don’t like the numbers?
So much for critical thinking skills. Would the Iowa state publication on employee incomes be more acceptable?
It is common for universities and colleges to hire a few celebrity academics as part of their marketing programs, in order to lure new students and boost enrollment.
Needless to say, lowly undergraduates will never, ever see these luminaries, let alone take a class with them. A few privileged grad students will get to soak up their wisdom in the one limited-enrollment graduate seminar they teach every semester.
Meanwhile, administrative hiring and salaries explode, as state funding continually diminishes, sending students (who are primarily taught by adjuncts earning poverty-level incomes) further and further into debt.
Yet Mr. Schellekens gleefully tries to spread the fairy tale of higher education academics living the high life, just as he tries to celebrate the glories of K-12 privatization…
I hope you have vision insurance, because obviously, you are reading things that are not there. I posted two independent sources which listed ALL the salaries.
“t is common for universities and colleges to hire a few celebrity academics as part of their marketing programs, in order to lure new students and boost enrollment.”
Feel free to point out the celebrity academics.
Since 2010 my son has taken two classes per semester, and has seen few if his actual professors. Those are too busy to teach the classes because they need to do research – is the given reason.
AAUP report on salaries: 76% of instructors in higher education are “contingent” faculty, with no job security, no academic freedom. Wages range from $18,000-$30,000. https://www.aaup.org/report/heres-news-annual-report-economic-status-profession-2012-13
Contingent Employment
The emergence of contingent employment as the most common situation for instructional staff members has been a recurring concern of this annual report in recent years. Under the heading of contingent instructional staff we include full- and part-time faculty members not on the tenure track and graduate student employees. (The category should include postdoctoral fellows as well, but national datasets provide us with very little information on individuals in these positions.) As has been detailed in numerous other AAUP reports, individuals employed in contingent academic positions have limited academic freedom, since their employment is subject to termination or nonrenewal without due-process procedures that are vital as protectors of academic freedom. Faculty members with contingent appointments risk dismissal if they challenge students by assigning significant reading loads or in-depth writing assignments. Graduate student instructors who raise controversial topics in their seminars can be deprived of their assistantships or even expelled from their programs. In most cases the individuals employed in contingent positions lack the institutional support necessary to do their jobs effectively, whether that be in the form of technology, private office space for consultation with students, or access to funds for travel to academic conferences. Too often, our colleagues in contingent positions are also excluded from meaningful participation in shared governance, as documented in the recent AAUP report The Inclusion in Governance of Faculty Members Holding Contingent Appointments.
This year’s report adds to the body of knowledge regarding the compensation and working conditions of academics employed in contingent positions. We first provide an updated overview of the extent of contingent employment on the basis of national aggregate employment statistics, followed by a supplement to recent reports on the compensation of part-time faculty members. Finally, we provide new analysis of data on the compensation and working conditions of full-time nontenure- track faculty members.
Figure 1 provides an update on trends in instructional staff employment through fall 2011, the most recent year for which national data have been released by the US Department of Education. Unfortunately, complete tabulations for fall 2011 have not yet been published at the time of this writing, so figure 1 provides an estimate for the most recent year based on the partial tabulations available.
Combining the contingent employment categories as described above, the graph shows that more than three of every four instructional staff positions (76 percent) are filled on a contingent basis. By far the largest category of employment is the part-time faculty (we explore the nomenclature for this category below). Tenured and tenure-track full-time positions combined form the next largest category but represent less than 25 percent of all appointments, and the proportions of individuals in both categories have been declining steadily. Over the entire period covered by the graph, the most rapid growth has been in part-time faculty appointments, which increased in number by more than 300 percent between 1975 and 2011. By contrast, the number of faculty members in full-time tenured or tenure-track positions grew by only 26 percent during the same period. In the most recent two-year period, it appears that growth in full-time positions off the tenure track actually was slightly more rapid than the increase in part-time faculty positions.
The failure to provide full support to instructors employed on a contingent basis deprives students of the highest-quality academic experience, and the predominance of contingent appointments weakens the academic enterprise. Furthermore, the unabated growth of contingency constitutes an ongoing threat to academic freedom that should be of concern to all who value higher education. If the majority of our colleagues are deprived of a full measure of academic freedom, can any of us be assured of our own freedom to question received wisdom and explore the most difficult dilemmas facing society?
Part-Time Faculty
There has been a lively (and ongoing) discussion among faculty advocates regarding the most appropriate labels for the various contingent employment categories that now comprise the large majority of instructional staff positions. The individuals in the largest category are most often referred to as “adjuncts,” even though many commentators have pointed out that their work is central, rather than peripheral, to the higher education enterprise. In this report, we refer to this category as “part-time faculty,” denoting the formal employment status these individuals hold. However, we acknowledge that many of our colleagues employed in “part-time” positions teach course loads comparable to those of full-time faculty members and may do so over a number of years. That they are regarded as part-time (and, indeed, “temporary”) employees by their institutions, however, is central to understanding their precarious situation—and the detrimental consequences of that precarious status for the quality of instruction they offer and for academic freedom itself.
As was noted in last year’s report, the AAUP is a founding member of the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW), a group of disciplinary societies and other organizations concerned with the deleterious effects on higher education of the overuse of contingent instructional appointments. In fall 2010, CAW carried out a survey of nearly twenty-nine thousand individuals employed in contingent academic positions. The first report of data from that survey, A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members, was released in June 2012. We refer readers who would like a more complete picture of the compensation and working conditions of part-time faculty members to the CAW report, but we are also including here a previously unpublished table on part-time faculty pay using those survey data.1
More than ten thousand part-time faculty members responded to questions in the CAW survey. These individuals were teaching a total of 19,615 courses and provided pay information for 17,035 of them. The median rate of pay per course (standardized at three credits) over all of those courses was $2,700. (The median, the point at which half of reported wage rates are lower and half are higher, is a better measure of the typical pay rate than the mean, commonly called the average, when data are available for each of the units being analyzed—in this case, each course taught by a responding part-time faculty member. The median is not skewed by a small number of entries at the high end, whereas the mean is.) Table B provides a breakdown of median pay rates by type of institution and region of the country.
The table indicates differences in pay rates attributable to the interaction of three main factors: institutional sector (public, private nonprofit, or for-profit), institutional level (based on degrees awarded), and geographic region. The effects of these factors on part-time faculty pay are similar to those observed in full-time faculty pay, albeit on a much smaller scale. With a range in median per-course wages from $1,800 at southeastern community colleges to $5,225 at private doctoral universities in New England, the variation is considerable. In general, per-course pay increases with the level of degrees awarded by the institution. Within each of these classifications, private nonprofit institutions generally pay more than public institutions and private for-profit institutions pay much less. (It should be noted, however, that the number of responses from faculty members teaching in for-profit institutions was much smaller than the numbers from the other two sectors.) Finally, there are differences in pay between regions, with institutions in New England generally paying the highest wages and those in the Southeast paying the lowest. (We find similar differences by region in full-time faculty pay in the AAUP survey.)
It bears pointing out how low part-time faculty pay rates actually are. In spring 1989, the second author of this report was a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was paid $3,000 per course to teach undergraduate economics. In 2010 dollars that would be $5,457 per course, slightly more than the median amount reported in 2010 by CAW respondents from the highest-paying sector, private doctoral universities in New England, and twice the overall national median rate. Although it has now been more than two years since the CAW survey data were collected, we have not adjusted the pay rates shown in table B for inflation, because it is not at all clear that part-time faculty pay rates are adjusted regularly to match increases in the cost of living. Only 18.8 percent of part-time faculty respondents to the CAW survey reported receiving regular salary increases.2
Solely for the sake of comparison, we can multiply the per-course wage rates shown in table B by a factor of eight courses—a full load for all but the most overworked community college faculty members—to produce an academic-year equivalent salary. These salaries would then range from about $18,000 in associate’s degree colleges (a little more than the pay of a full-time minimum wage worker) to just over $30,000 at private doctoral universities. That rate of pay represents one-third or less of the national average salary for full-time faculty members at those institutions, based on the AAUP’s 2010–11 data—and part-time positions do not include benefits, in most cases.
Later in 2012, the Center for the Future of Higher Education released a report based on data collected by the New Faculty Majority Foundation in fall 2011. Who Is Professor “Staff” and How Can This Person Teach So Many Classes? focuses on the deleterious effects of two prevalent practices in the employment of part-time faculty members: “just-intime” hiring and a lack of institutional support for instruction. Because of its relatively small respondent pool, the report focuses on exposing the negative consequences of these unsatisfactory working conditions on the educational experiences of students rather than on specific measures of compensation or workload. The AAUP continues to work in collaboration with both organizations, and we welcome the increased data collection— but we need much, much more data.
Using available national data, we cannot say definitively what proportion of total college and university instruction is provided by our colleagues on part-time appointments. We do not have a precisely representative national sample from which to estimate typical per-course pay rates. And we cannot say with absolute certainty what proportion of faculty members in part-time appointments would prefer to be in full-time tenuretrack or tenured positions. But the data we do have make it abundantly clear that part-time faculty members are paid unacceptably low wages, and the extent of this inequity—together with the situation of full-time non-tenure-track colleagues described in the next section—forms a very real (even if still hidden from public view) multi-tier academic labor structure. It’s an inequity that cannot be allowed to stand.
That was a quote from the AAUP report.
Ah, those lucky adjuncts, luxury, Mercedes, gold plated private jets. Sorry, that’s Trump!
Rudy: The point is that Fallwell betrays both his university’s integrity (such as it is) and his own ignorance by making such statements (about professors’ salaries and “ivory towers”). He’s wrongheaded on both counts.
But what is it about all these posts about adjuncts, job security, benefits, my own and others’ experience of poverty wages don’t you understand? But of course you can shift the argument to “it’s Obama’s fault” as you did in another post, instead of answering the question or suggesting that your own posted information is narrow (both one state only, includes coaches (?) and is exclusive of other issues–doesn’t include adjuncts salaries, duties, or job security, etc.,) as has been suggested by several others here. I haven’t taken a poll on that either, but my guess is many others here get it.
Well Rudy I’ll admit being shocked at the kind of salaries Iowa state pays to coaches, admins, & many professors. But maybe you slipped a ringer in here. Iowa state u is an outlier according to their own figures in terms of very hi % full-time profs, very lo % adjuncts, compared to national average.
http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/iowa-state-university/academic-life/faculty-composition/
The national research does not give the Walmart wages claim any support, either
I should have scrolled down before I posted . But I did include an interesting link. I believe the anonymous author has gone public since this old article.
I think those in the population who support vouchers assume that most will be used at private schools (Christian, Jewish or secular) with long track records. However, in addition to the problem of opportunistic people wanting to open up schools without the need to raise their own money, they must realize that people of other faiths (most likely Muslims) may see vouchers as an opportunity to acceralate the building of a system of schools similar to the Catholic system. At that point, I think their support of vouchers may change.
Didn’t that happen in Louisiana? An Islam-affiliated school applied to accept vouchers and a state legislator was dumbfounded at the fact that a non-Christian/Jewish religious school would want them?
The answer is YES.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/valarie-hodges-lawmaker-retracts-support-for-bill_n_1655249.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/louisiana_n_1593995.html
You are right. In Louisiana, some voucher supporters were shocked when an Islamic school applied for funding. It withdrew its request.
However, there is no reason to exclude Islamic schools when Trump’s plan is activated.
It might also be pertains to to the discussion to remind ourselves that the radicalism during the days of the anarchists (circa 1880-1919) that climaxed with the Red Scare of A. Mitchell Palmer and bombs sent in the mail came partly from immigrants who were excluded from schools and so educated their own.
Pertainent
Pertinent
Wow. Read CNN’s interview with Bannon. This is bizarre stuff. We are in for some seriously difficult times as a country.
“darkness is good.”
“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing,”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/steve-bannon-donald-trump-hollywood-reporter-interview/index.html
They are telling us exactly who they are. Frightening.
Six major corporations dispense about 90% of the “news” now. They control what is taught fo most Americans. Now they will have the charters to” teach our children [similar to Hitler’s youth] and the indoctrination of the U. S. will be pretty much complete. Along with our Constitutional rights that are under siege, the information that the government has on all of us I fear a police state and the loss of any semblance of a Democratic nation.
But cheer up, in a few, probably not that many years when climate change really hits – note the 40 degree above normal temperature in the Arctic already – the millions of people along the ocean front make for a mass migration a police state will be demanded. With all the guns out there it would undoubtedly be a necessity. That will last for a bit of time until the planet becomes so untenable that Mother Nature herself will cleanse itself of the”animals” responsible for continually raping her.
Gordon,
I often think this way too (about the climate change part). 😦
Whose salaries are out of this world? CEO’s or working Americans?
Can anyone image a business meeting where the CEO announces “we need to get back to basics” in any domain other than in the education sector. Education systems need to leverage our knowledge of how the brain learns to make learning equitable for everyone. This is possible! https://mtreadwell.wordpress.com/
Adjuncts at my community college are not allowed to teach more than nine credits per semester to preclude having to pay benefits.
Yep. And public schools keep aids under 30!hours so they do not have to pay benefits. Thank you president obama!!
The exact Walmart solution
So do the math for me. The ACA costs about $ 10,000 pp. that does not include the actual medical expenditures.
Friend of mine is covered by this. In 2016 she had two knees replaced. In 2017 her hips are in the list.
Between the 2, that is over 100,000 – taken the national average for each.
More than 600,000 knee replacements are done each year. Some of these will be repeats.
Due to the increased age, about 3MILLION of these procedures will take place in 2030.
Now you have a calculator handy??
And that is why companies and schools are less than excited about putting staff on full time anymore.
Rudy,
The switch from full time to part time started many years before ACA
Catherine,
I lost classes many times until my department chair advised me to teach Friday night classes since no full timer would want them. I also taught a few semesters of 7:30 AM classes for the same reason. Adjuncts can be relieved of courses mid-semester as well.
To Abigail Sure: Diane says adjuncts are paid circa $3000 per course; however, some classes and universities pay less than that. One I know pays $2000.
Sorry–Shure, not Sure.
Community colleges traditionally pay less than four year institutions. One of my adjunct buddies shared with me yesterday that she is taking a fifteen hour per week cashier job at a supermarket to supplement her income. She pays a fine on her tax return due to not having health insurance. Some adjuncts reside at the YMCA.
To Abigail Shure: I remember reading about some universities having trailer parks for their travelling adjuncts. When I worked at Longwood College (now University) in Farmville VA, I supplemented in the community college system–I was “lucky” enough to teach fairly regularly as an adjunct, but still didn’t know each semester if I would be working and having an income. (At times they took my classes from me, once they were filled with my name on them and after I developed my class content, to give to a tenured person. The irony: ethics classes.) So I worked for a local florist during holiday and wedding times. (I give up with Rudy. He can’t be mistaken, on principle. Dogmatism is nothing new, but it’s also the disease of the century.)
Jerry Falwell, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and, my God, Henry Kissinger. What a list of old geezers. We’re building a bridge BACK to the 20th century (Clinton ’96 campaign reference.) Remember when those Soviet leaders, those fossils, would stand there watching May Day parades in Moscow? Who ever thought those guys would disappear in the blink of an eye?
Trump’s crew actually reminds me of the Michael Jackson “Thriller” video when all the zombies start chasing people around…. but these old G.O.P. farts sure can’t dance. Talk about “the funk of forty thousand years.” I’m old but at least I make an effort. If I ever start looking like Steve “Darkness is Good” Bannon will someone please hit me…hard.
My guess is that most young people (even ones who voted for Trump) will have zero patience once some of these retreads try to turn back the clock to 1955 while at the same time doing things like demolishing net neutrality. Despite a decline in voter support from young adults for Democrats this year, Hillary still received sold support from the citizens who will be the future of our country. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/ Students (whatever their political loyalties) give me hope, amidst all the depressing news of the past two weeks.
Democrats vs. Republicans, Conservatives vs. Liberals, City vs. Country….blah, blah, blah….. What I’m really seeing is a conflict shaping up between generations. Bernie got it. But Trump….well, we’ll see if he has any money left over to help out students with crushing college loan debt once he gets done building a wall or a moat or whatever he has in mind. (Maybe he’ll go for one of those invisible fences? I can imagine Trump telling us that Mexico will pay for that plus put shock collars on its own citizens! And, some Trump supporters will believe it.)
I wish Donald Trump well, for many reasons -including those two words: “Mike Pence”. But, you know, does Trump look all that healthy? Those moments in Reno when the secret service hustled him off the stage….you got a glimpse of the little, old man, bent over and fearful, that Trump really is. I replayed that clip several times. It’s eerie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-r9DBEI3jw (Interesting: note the military-looking cops (?) at about the 22 second mark in the clip. Will we be seeing even more of this militarization on our streets in the years to come?)
The G.O.P. likes to claim that they have this wide range of diverse support and that they are the future of our nation. But their ideas too often represent the worst of the past: love of clan, hatred of the other, mistrust of science and an unwillingness to question authority and explore the unknown. Trumpism is a reaction, a backlash. It’s all about fear.
And, kids just don’t have that sort of fear -because they are kids. Bless their souls.
When I was a boy, the PhDs in our state university lived comfortable lives. Now tenure track positions are way down. I have a friend who has moved five times in search of a salary that will raise a family. The Falwell is either unaware of the truth or ignores it for his own purposes. in all the fake news discussion this week, one thing stands out: facts are not facts in this soup of information that we call news. Since I was a boy, I have listened to radio of the far right. One consistency has been the repeating of stories that could not be true on the face of them. This is now mainstream.
Tenured positions are being phased out at my college as well.
He talks about big salaries but it’s ok for him to earn just under a million dollars a year as the head of Liberty University. He is anti-government but wants to use religion to control everyone else. The evangelical Christians in this country have lost all moral authority by supporting Trump. As a former Republican and conservative I can tell you that these people are power mad. The church has traded holiness and love for unbridled power. They have sold out for 30 pieces of silver like Judas. I can also say with confidence that the Republican Party is filled with bigots, homophobes, and ignorant idiots. Sometimes the truth really hurts!
Democrats disguise their racial and class biases under fancy rhetoric.
. . . and “elitism” is code for “anti-intellectualism.”
Neoliberals speak glowingly of meritocracy as if race and class played no role in their paths to success.
Abigail Shure says: “Neoliberals speak glowingly of meritocracy as if race and class played no role in their paths to success.” Yes, some do. No broad brushing from either side of that distinction, however?
I think at the fundamental level of thought, and admitting extremes on both sides between progressive and conservative, it’s a matter of emphasis? (Trump is on the extreme side of group bias/loyalty, family, etc., over merit–to his detriment, and ours). Both “merit” and (as you say) race, class, even family (bloodlines) are two sides of the human coin and condition; and the dialectic that we must work through to find our place in the dynamism of history. But in the argument today, to focus on what is extreme on one side is to feed the extremities and reduce the possibility of peaceful dialogue.
I am all in favor of dialogue. Forgive me for being close minded, but I would be challenged to find common ground with neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Christian supremacists. I also believe wholeheartedly in climate change, evolution, gender equality. I inhabit a diverse world and I love it. I do not favor a return to slavery, Jim Crow, or Japanese internment.