I'm not saying all of them are overpaid. I'm saying some definitely are. You wanna know why colleges are so expensive? A great deal of the expenses went to become wages and salaries. Some professors could make 300 bucks an hour. That's right. Not all of them, but some do. Not all professors are great teachers. A lot of students go to college to learn by THEMSELVES, because their teachers may be great scientists, but they are lousy teachers. They teach under the assumption that you have already made all your preparations, and you already know almost everthing. Some professors were foreign born, with an almost indiscernible accent. You can look up the kind of teachers I'm talking about on those rate-your-teacher websites. Some students outright warn everyone not to pick up certain course because the professor, no matter how brilliant an expert he is when working on a project, sucks really bad at being a teacher, or pick up some courses because the professor was born in China, nobody knows what the heck he's talking about, and as a result he lets everyone pass so nobody would try to step on his toes. Think about a college kid who dropped out because it really, really was his teachers' fault .And he can't do no nothing. If he makes an complaint it'll likely just be dismissed. Because hey, there were other guys who passed, right? American people are naive, and put teachers on ridiculously high pedestals and give them all sorts of halos. Some of them really don't deserve any of it.
It sounds like your perception of what a college professor should be doing is a bit naïve. College is about opening your mind to ideas you have never considered, to be exposed to ideas and topics you never experienced in your K-12 years, and about teaching you to be self sufficient. Most of what you're expected to do at college IS you teaching yourself. They don't hold your hand and walk you through everything you're expected to learn. They expose you to ideas and give you so much time between classes that you have time to explore the topic, read, practice, and develop thoughts on the topics. All that free time isn't just to party and wait for the next class....but if it becomes that, you get out of college what you put into it. Professors do teach, some much better than others, so we agree. But your grade shouldn't depend on how well they taught you. It should depend on how well you learned, researched, read, asked, discussed, etc. No doubt there are some terrible professors. I've had them myself and you just have to muddle through and feel like you got nothing out of the course. I don't know how you fix that. We have schools at all levels with people like that, but fortunately they are small in numbers compared to the number of much better ones. But their pay isn't usually as high as you claimed, unless you're dividing their salary over their hours spent teaching. And you have to remember, they hold PhD's so they, too, have a tremendous cost just to get to that level of education. I considered going for a PhD myself, but at $30-50k, I can't justify it with future earnings potential.
Lots of the teachers have end of semester reviews. Obviously you should be required to meet a certain grade average (depending on the class). I know some of my teachers have been really great and it's obvious they busted their behind to supply a multitude of learning materials to increase student success, and then I've had a few who were just like "read this chapter, now take this test". One of them who did that I actually emailed him and asked him why I was even paying for this class when I could have just read the book and tested out of it by myself. I'm not sure if the money is going to teachers, the stupid rock climbing walls, or administrative costs.
No college kid is dropping out because it is the teacher's fault. Yes, teachers do matter, especially in terms of motivating the students and finding the right balance between the carrot and the stick. Exams can't be too easy or too hard, finding that right balance, which is required for kids to not slack off, but also not be discouraged, takes experience and I spend a lot of time on it. In that sense, teaching requires a lot of hand-on psychology, trying to understand the state of mind of the students in the class. That's why I always mingle with the students after an exam to get a feel for how it went. As for salaries, yes, some Professors are overpaid. However, you have to realize that, at least in the STEM field, faculty are mostly valued upon their ability to bring funding to the school. Teaching ability is often secondary, so is time spent on teaching. That's what the students and critics often don't understand: It seems to be a lazy life when I spend only 5 contact hours a week with students. However, they don't realize that these contact hours require 5 more hours of preparation, if one is experienced. Second, the rest of the time is spent on research, not just lazing around doing nothing. And that's where the money for salaries comes from. I have brought millions of $ in funding to the school, so why should I be paid like a K-12 teacher? Ok, off to class at 8:30, for which I prepared after getting up at 5:30 am this morning.
My issue is why are state schools trying to compete with frills unrelated to teaching the whole purpose when my uncle went to a state school was it was a solid education at a low cost to students but don't expect the campus to be like a private school. His dorm has four students sharing it per room as an undergraduate and in medical school that dropped to two per dorm room. It offered decent food but think army assembly line food it was tasty but not fancy and the school focused on a good library and adequate facilities to do their job of teaching including in the sciences. But the schools were still competitive you had to go in prepared, you had to work at your studies and they set the bar high and when you left employers sought students to hire at good jobs. And Professors not doing research or guest scholars focused on teaching and could expect to be tenured with the job security and pay suited to being scholars at a good university but not to high. And why attack professors how much money to coaches get in football for example at a good school, millions, and how many full professors with tenure could that hire? I blame a lot of factors on costs and the professors shouldn't be a target a brilliant scholar should if they are teaching good pay they have advanced degrees and a stable base of teaching is vital to colleges and universities.
The highest expense by far at my university is building and maintenance. It absolutely dwarfs staff pay. Did you also know that the entire freshman year is designed to get kids to drop out? If you make it through that it is more likely you will stick around to help fund the university. As you go higher up in education you are not taught as much because you are supposed to have the skills to learn on your own by that point. I do not think one of my masters courses went the entire length of the period unless a good conversation developed.
I am guessing some of mine made well more than that on a per hour basis. All the school paid for though was their shared secretary. A private foundation paid some of these very high-end distinguished people a mint to teach for a year or two at the university. Most were well worth the money by my measure, but it all depends on what you put into it on the student side of the equation when you have such a person. If you treat it as, "Crap I have to go sit there for an hour and listen to some old guy" you won't get as much out of it as you will if you really try to harvest their brains and experience.
I think that is really the misconception, that professors are paid based on the number of contact hours with students, resulting in this higlhy-exaggerated $300 per hour salary. Even in a small 4 year college, professors also have to contribute to service and do some research, and that is often on top of a three 4-credit course teaching load, which already amounts to 12 contact hours a week, plus preparation time, office hours etc. Believe me, if you teach three 4-credit courses, you won't have much time to do anything else, let alone slack off lazily in your office. At research universities, salary for research comes into the picture, making it even harder for the average Joe to understand what a professor is paid for. At medical schools, for example, professors are paid 20-30% of their salary to teach, and the rest of their salary has to come from research grants. No funding -- only 20% salary, that's the cut throat world of today's medical research. And NIH funding lines, for example are in the 8%, so it is not like federal funding is automatic for each idiot, as some assume, it is rather an extremely competitive process.
It isn't always really a misconception though. Sometimes you will have academic super stars hired to teach a couple classes just to have your university name associated with them when they will be out doing what they would already be out doing. Those professors are the academic equivalent of celebrity spokepersons. Instead of selling make-up, they are selling your school. The school is paying mostly to have "Professor of Economics at Deckelburgh University" under their name when they are on TV and such. You are correct about many professors though. I was referencing these high-dollar visiting profs. Most I had were wonderful people and would take the time to spend with students outside the classroom, but I did have 1 who saw any contact outside the class with students as a waste of his time. There is no hard and fast rule of thumb there. My university I think had about a dozen or so of those type professors a year paid for by the outside foundation, and it was a mixed bag, but they were all paid very well. It was a source of discontent though among other profs that these people were brought in and paid even higher than department heads and the head of the university, but hey, even those celebrity profs got chump change in comparison to some of the athletic heads.
I think those "superstar" cases are extremely rare. As for the athletic directors, I completely agree. At our place, the last basketball coach was the highest paid employee, he made even more than the president. I am sure he brought nowhere near as much value to the school as his salary was worth. Name recognition in sports is, however, a tool in the competition for the best students. As are hotel-like dorms, modern exercise facilities everywhere on campus, and the "college experience". All these amenities add much more to the cost than faculty salaries.
so basically you just admitted the major problem with "higher education"... you're not a professor, you're a salesman... maybe the school should separate those roles... I mean "its for the kids" right? when will we start putting them first, instead of professors, amenities, administration, etc etc... the universities adapt to cater to out of state students, simply because they know they can charge them far more than state students... at what point did the university board decide this was best for state students... they literally price education out of range of the average state student by attempting to cater and draw out of state wealthy students... this is backwards logic... P.S. and I know its not fair for me to compare my states university system with another, I know it varies GREATLY in the amount of waste and corruption, I acknowledge that... in our whole university system we have hundreds of NON-RESEARCH professors teaching 0+0 1+0 1+1 or 2+1 and for this we're paying them over $100,000 PLUS benefits... only now is my state addressing this and allowing them to be fired, reassigned, whatever the case needs to be... but the university board, is refusing to use those measures... its become a political tug of war, we want the university to run the university, but they aren't interested in applying "republican" measures to make tuition more affordable, they are hell bent on keeping the entire staff, even the ones who do nothing all week... thats the reality many across this nation are facing, "entrenched entitlement" as I call it... that was going to be the title of my book and the examples I've come across traveling america, the publisher however said no, told me it was too many big words... P.S.S. and to further drive home the point, even with all that under-utilized staff, first year students still can't get the pre-reqs they need... so the entire first year is all throw away classes just to stay enrolled so they qualify for priority placement in pre-reqs second year... we just made those kids take 20k or more in loans to get on a waiting list... if that is not the biggest outrage in america today I don't know what is... meanwhile they bring in all these professors who teach "fun" classes for first years... why... bring in professors who can teach the *******n pre-reqs so they can have a chance to graduate easily in 4 years or in many cases 3 years quite realistically... rather than cram heavy course loads into the other years trying to make up the time and overload themselves... its just mind boggling the abuse and waste...
Extremely overpaid, which is the problem as to why most people can't go to college because tuition soars. The way it is done only the rich will be able to get an education which is absolutely ridiculous. Now Im not saying that college should be free, but *******n $30k for a semester? By the time you are finished paying for college you could have bought a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing Lamborghini, or in some places of the country you could have a 4 bedroom, 3 full baths and 3 car garage home. And on top of that they get paid to teach THEIR VERSION of what they think is correct. It is an absolute joke.
I agree with the salesman aspect. Applying for funding with 8% funding lines is tough, and it is what many professors spend a majority of their time on. That's what you get when you try to run research like a "business", of course with the aim to protect tax payer's dollars. As for separating research and teaching faculty, this is actually something many universities are looking into. Of course, the idea is cost savings, because they could pay teaching faculty a pittance compared to research faculty. In my view, having 100% teaching faculty is not good, except maybe for intro level classes. The whole university experience is based on students becoming exposed to cutting edge research, in and out of the classroom. Full time teaching faculty, who have been removed from research for too long, just will be out of the loop and will be unable to show students what is going on in the field. As for non-research professors getting +$100,000, I somewhat doubt that this is a common occurrence. I am sure there probably are a few, but by and large, teaching faculty are even having trouble protecting their tenure status, let alone making outrageous salary demands. - - - Updated - - - Did you even read my other posts in the thread? Or do they not fit into your "all faculty are overpaid and lazy" picture.
Lets just look at it this way. The University of Memphis is a very small college in comparison to more prestigious campuses, and is not even close at all to being one of the top colleges in the country. The average salary for an assistant professor is $71k, and there are well over 50 of them. That alone is $3.5million a year minimum to cover those salaries. To do 4 years at the University of Memphis it is going to run you about $80k , and that is a small school that is mediocre in education . Now go to a college like Duke University and the average salary for a assistant professor is $164k. at at the least 50 of those that comes to over $8million a year. That is not even getting into all the different kinds of directors, assistants and whatever else. Hell that is not even talking about full professors. By the time you have 4 years of "higher education" at this school you will be in the whole no less than $200k . Basically you go to school and come out in poverty lol. Tell me again how professors are suffering again?
well when I made the statement they should end this practice of professors being salesmen, I do NOT want you or anyone else to confuse that with the attempt to separate the teachers into two categories, for many of the same reasons you cited which are not just an opinion, it will factually change higher education for the worse... the separation I want is professors who spend more time wining and dining big donors brought in for the hoity toity tours as we called them back in the day... I firmly believe research programs MUST involve the graduate students at a minimum, it should not just be a pick and choose your favorite kissass students in your program, it should involve all of them in the graduate program... and to a lesser degree other students, but this will vary immensely based on field and technical level required... I've been amazingly proud of the research done at our university of wisconsin, but I am disgusted every time I am taken on the hoity toity tours in an attempt to suck money out of my pocket, and in talking to many of the professors, they are frustrated to their wits end in spending more time fundraising in a given year, than working... and I'm frustrated to my wits end, funding them, when graduate students are not involved as a practical matter of education in that field... now I realize and acknowledge the limitations in some of the research projects and more hands on deck, won't increase results, won't increase speed, but ultimately they are there for higher learning which is the reason why I've given so much and am reaching a point where I no longer want to fund things anymore because the education is no longer coming from it, its just professors pet projects without the students as the primary goal as to why we are all making an effort at this incredibly expensive level of education... however I will to my grave, fight you on the non-research professor pay, we have public records requests that have been done showing how little some work, and the immense amount of dollars and benefits they get paid... make no mistake, there is a large enough portion of professors teaching crap classes that won't help educate anyone, and they are the throw away classes many first years take to get an easy A until they can get preferred status for pre-req courses in their second year... its disgusting seeing what this great university has turned into, a luxury amenity farm for wealthy out of state students, rather then the in-state students taxpayers want in... P.S. in fact here is a link to a story published by them, ironic enough, wanting to and lifting the cap on out-of-state students... https://www.wisconsin.edu/news/archive/regents-approve-lifting-cap-on-out-of-state-students-at-uw-madison-day-2-news-summary/ this is the story that last year, has me refusing to even step foot on the campus for the hoity toity tours this year... I made it very clear to the "handlers" who handled me its why... its disgusting to me that wisconsin students, who we fund this university for, get turned down and rejected so a quarter of the current students get to come from out of state, and now estimates are a third or more might be out of state students who were previously turned down due to the cap...
