The point is, more and more academics are turning into tomato pickers -- temporary, floating teaching staff kept going by the carrot of permanent status. Until they learn to hang together (and with the students), they will most certainly hang separately.
Joanna
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Eugene Vilensky evilensky at gmail.com, Sun Dec 5 19:29:43 PST 2004:
>
>>> "As "lower-status colleges" greatly outnumber "prestigious
>>> research-oriented universities," it is fair to hypothesize that the
>>> majority of college teachers come from working-class backgrounds, by
>>> the standards of the aforementioned researchers' works."
>>
>> ----
>> I disagree. All 8 state schools in KY have made it a point to
>> "strive for excellence" which to them means throwing money at top
>> faculty while driving tuition up 13% per year.
>
>
> Have faculty salary gone up by 13% per year at the state schools in
> KY? Whatever is thrown at faculty, it doesn't look like money.
>
> <blockquote>Academe
> <http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2004/04ma/04matoc.htm>
> March-April 2004
> Volume 90, Number 2
>
> Don't Blame Faculty for High Tuition
>
> The Annual Report On The Economic
> Status Of The Profession, 2003-04
>
> List of Tables and Figures
> Explanation of Statistical Data
> Report in .pdf format
>
> Highlights of the report:
>
> Average faculty salaries increased 2.1 percent overall from 2002-03 to
> 2003-04, only 0.2 percentage points above the rate of inflation.
> Average salaries at some institutions were actually lower than in the
> previous year, and the increase in faculty salaries was substantially
> less than the rise in tuition prices. But once again, the situation
> varies across the range of institutional types.
>
> * Faculty continuing at the same institution received an average
> salary increase of 3.1 percent, or 1.2 percent in real
> (inflation-adjusted) terms. That is the lowest single-year increase
> for continuing faculty in more than two decades, and the lowest real
> increase in seven years.
>
> * Following the pattern of the past three years, faculty at public
> colleges and universities fared worse than their counterparts at
> private-independent (non-church-related) and church-related
> institutions. Continuing faculty members at public institutions
> received salary increases of 2.6 percent on average, while faculty at
> private-independent institutions averaged a 4.0 percent increase.
> Paired with the decline in full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty
> at public doctoral institutions, the widening salary gap between
> sectors does not bode well for the future of public higher education.
>
> * Continuing faculty at nearly 30 percent of the institutions in the
> AAUP sample received average salary increases that failed to keep up
> with inflation; almost half of public institutions had faculty in this
> situation. This number includes some institutions at which even
> continuing faculty saw their salaries cut.
>
> * In both public and private institutions, contingent faculty-those
> who work part time and those who are full time but not on the tenure
> track-constitute a growing share of the faculty. For a set of
> institutions for which we consistently had data, by 2001,
> non-tenure-track faculty made up 28 percent of all full-time faculty
> in four-year public institutions and 31 percent in private
> institutions. More than half of newly hired full-time faculty in these
> institutions are now off the tenure track. In 1989, part-time faculty
> accounted for 17 percent of all faculty in public four-year
> institutions, and by 2001, they made up 21 percent of faculty at these
> institutions. At private colleges and universities, the proportion of
> faculty teaching part time grew from 33 percent in 1989 to 41 percent
> by 2001.
>
> * As has been widely observed, salaries for faculty vary substantially
> by discipline. This year's report compares nonmedical disciplines at
> the full professor and new assistant professor levels and tracks
> changes in disciplinary disparities over time.
>
> * This year's report also provides evidence to counter the common
> assertion that rising faculty salaries are responsible for increases
> in tuition. Comparing faculty salary increases and tuition price hikes
> over a twenty-eight-year period, the report concludes that if
> tuition-and-fee increases had been held to the rate of average faculty
> salary increases, average tuition and fees would be much lower today
> in both the public and the private sectors.</blockquote>