Academic" Salaries. This is what's wrong with education.

[Are_grits_groceries]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1086

I'm sure it's worse now.

[DrDan]

1. so you want to lump all the ills of education on the salaries of football coaches?

Never mind parents ignore their responsibilities.
Never mind waning administrative support of classroom teachers.
Never mind declining budgets.

just to name a couple of other non-contributors.

[Are_grits_groceries]

8. *Sigh*

No. I should have said part of the problem.

However, I think there is a disparity here.

In addition, a lot of football programs don't make a real effort for their players to graduate. Pay for an extra year if they need it to slow down to graduate. A lot of kids do.

I love college football. I'm just not enamored of some of its practices.

[backwoodsbob]

12. you do know coaches for the most part

aren't payed by the university directly right?

They are payed by the athletic department.

At major universities the football program pays for pretty much every other athletic program

For every dollar they make the program brings in about ten in revenue for the athletic department.

Dump football and you can kiss rowing and swimming and gymnastics and pretty much every small sport goodbye

[Are_grits_groceries]

17. They are connected:

Not all athletic departments are self-supporting. Between 80% and 95% of Division I-A athletic departments still rely on either the university's general fund or student fees to balance the budget, according to NCAA financial reports obtained by USA TODAY and other academic studies.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-16-coaches-salaries-cover_x.htm

[QC]

22. At colleges that aren't athletic powerhouses--which is probably 95% of them--

athletic programs are money pits.

But still it goes on....

[customerserviceguy]

26. The question should be

at the money-pit schools, what are athletic directors and coaches being paid? The graph in the OP is pretty, but it's like lumping actor salaries all together then averaging them out. It may not be a fair thing to compare the Brad Pitts and the Meryl Streeps with the pay given to the summer stock theatre performers who work in venues that are dependent on donations to survive.

If the issue is divorcing education from entertainment, so be it, but you'd have to subsidize even more of the educational establishment if you didn't have donations coming in from proud alumni every time the place they got a sheepskin places high in national sports rankings.

There are a lot of places where there is waste, fraud and abuse in the educational industry. It's not just football and basketball.

[QC]

33. I don't have a particular problem with coaches, as I have said elsewhere here,

because I think they are only a small part of the problem, if a particularly glaring one.

It's the administration building where the real problem is located.

I agree, though, that there's no point in comparing the pay of coaches like Urban Meyer and Nick Saban to some guy at the local teacher college.

[backwoodsbob]

38. the article says

most football programs majority support the entire athletic department.

The coach that puts asses in the seats is gonna make big money because he brings in about ten to one on the investment

[DrDan]

50. huge disparity

and I say that as a former middle school, high school and university teacher. I am very aware of the disparity.

My wife is a current middle school teacher - and my daughter was just certified to teach mathematics - but unable to find a position due to the budget problems in our county.

But I don't begrudge football coaches their salaries. Nor to I think it is the "problem" with schools today.

[sandnsea]

21. Misplaced priorities, I believe is the point

Which that graph clearly shows. If the values reflected in your post were expressed with money, that football coach salary wouldn't be that way.

[Bandit]

29. "Declining budgets"

hmmm, look at that chart again and re-examine your statement of "declining budgets" for education. :shrug:

[DrDan]

51. I am referring more to budget problems in public schools

programs being slashed, teachers cut, etc. Just no emphasis on education today - more important to cut taxes than to fund the future of our country.

[mitchum]

2. I also have a real problem with administrator's salaries...

they are also ludicrously overpaid.

[QC]

4. GMTA

[supernova]

5. Yes, they are

I'm sorry, the Dean and the Provost are not rock stars and are not there to turn into such. Cut those by 40% and raise professors by at least a 1/3.

[City Lights]

23. Indeed. nt

[QC]

3. The real problem there is the administrators, not the football coach.

There's only one head coach, but there's a swarm of administrators each making two to three times what a mere professor makes.

That's where the bulk of the payroll ends up--in that admin building where the provosts and deans and associate deans and their associated bureaucrats are thicker than fire ants.

Of course, I am biased, as I do the mere teaching that has become an afterthought in most colleges, but I can give you numbers if you want them.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

18. You can argue where all that overhead comes from...

I too teach, and though the admin staff is large, they all seem harried and overloaded. No one is coasting. When asked why I hear things like state and government mandates, fundraisers and grants to keep the doors open, and litigation avoidance. Those are from individuals, not formal statements. I would love to see some sort of Kaisen Event or Lean Six Sigma applied to the Univ admin process to see what is really needed and how much is self induced.

[mitchum]

19. I think much of it is self-induced as a result of self-justification for all...

of those layers of administrative excess. It feeds itself on busywork.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

24. Kaisens are great at exposing that kind of stuff

[QC]

30. Our administration, to great fanfare and general celebration, set up a Kaizen grant program,

but it turned out to be nothing more than a back door way to do merit pay, which the faculty and staff have overwhelmingly and vehemently rejected but the prez is determined to have anyway.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

46. Have to wonder how they could have twisted a process review technique that far

[QC]

48. Well, they just used the name. Our leadership loves corporate buzzwords and cliches.

We are all about the corporate model now.

If it's "green" or "robust" or "innovative" or involves "360 degree communication," we are all over it, baby.

[QC]

25. I agree that they are busy, but much of what they do is busywork, or

worse yet, creating busywork for the faculty.

My administration lives and breathes bureaucratic process, which has become an end in itself that has little to do with teaching and learning.

At my college, faculty have been burdened with so much committee work that teaching has become an afterthought, but in most cases the recommendations of those committees go straight into the memory hole and the administration does whatever it wanted to do originally, before we spent a year studying an issue, making recommendations, etc.

But, and this is the purpose of the whole thing, the administration points to all those irrelevant committees and pointless meetings and ignored recommendations as signs of:

1. How productive we are, and
2. How the administration values the ideal of faculty governance

The people who orchestrate this charade are each being paid from two to five times what a classroom teacher gets.

I agree with you 100%--it is time to examine each part of the bureaucracy and decide whether we really need it. I think we could probably dispose of a lot of it.

[hfojvt]

64. I would like to see numbers

it seems to me that professors are making pretty good money too.

[QC]

66. OK. here's the situation where I am.

Out of about 400 full-time employees at my institution, only about 80 teach.

Of the 100 highest paid people at the institution, only 23 are full-time classroom teachers. The others are bureaucratic functionaries of some sort.

Sounds like a lot of overhead to me, as well as a maldistribution of funding.

The figures in the graph above are for R1 research institutions (think major universities). Most college professors are in smaller two and four-year institutions and are making about half what the people in the graph are. It's like pointing to Wall Street salaries to argue that the tellers down at the local bank are paid well.

[iamjoy]

6. That's Not What's Wrong

Showing the ridiculous salaries of athletic coaches as compared to professors is not what's wrong with education. The reason these coaches make so much is because a winning sports team encourages more donations to the university - thus, the coaches salaries are a reflection of the money they can bring in for the school.

I would say it is indicative of a larger problem in our society that we value entertainment over academic accomplishment. The star of the school is not the winner of the science fair, but the champion sports player. The nerd is derided, the jock glorified. It is in school as it is in life. Our free market society had decided that having athletic ability is more valuable than having intellectual abilities and being beautiful is more important than being smart. Males have more pressure for the former and females for the latter, but it's the same principle, really

[kenny blankenship]

14. And are all the sports teams "winning"?

And where do those donations they bring in actually go?

[Bluenorthwest]

31. They value Sports about academic accomplishment

if 'entertainment' were the focus, Theater and Music departments would not be languishing. It is not entertainment, but sports and dollars that are valued.
Words mean things.

[RaleighNCDUer]

42. And there it is - sports is NOT entertainment.

It is ritualized combat.

Cheering a sports team is not being entertained - it is quasi-patriotism.

It keeps the 'hooray for our side' mentality alive between wars, and distracts from the horror of what is going on during wars.

Sports is a lie.

[iamjoy]

53. I Was Thinking of Movies

yes, theater and music departments hurt. I was thinking of what models and movie stars get paid. Most people don't go to plays, or operas or the symphony any more.

[Zynx]

56. I'd dare say most top tier Universities bring in far more in donations for research than for sports.

And I would also say it probably isn't even close.

[ProgressiveFool]

7. this must be an anti-University of California post

Where the entire system is in danger of closure for the "lower tier schools" (Riverside, Santa Cruz, Merced), yet the single highest paid UC employee is Jeff Tedford, the Cal football coach. He's good, but not that good.

I say this as a Cal alum. Yet another over-hyped shot at the national championship isn't worth it.

[teenagebambam]

36. Thank you

I teach in a Fine Arts department. We have the highest retention rate of any department in the University, the highest ratio of applications to enrollments, and have increased our enrollment by over 100% in the past three years. Yet because our department isn't cost-effective (because the bulk of our teaching is one-on-one) we get nothin', while money is poured into athletics.

[TheMightyFavog]

NCAA should step in here

Institute a salary cap of $150,000/yr for coaches of all sports

[ananda]

9. Players too...

I remember an article in my local Houston rag, back
in the day when I was teaching there, titled:

Is Nolan Ryan Worth a Good English Teacher?

[d_r]

10. dang

I wish I'd made $17K a year as a grad student.

[QC]

11. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I got by on about $10k

plus enough loans to put me in a lifetime of debt.

Ah, those grad school memories.

[kevinbgoode]

52. Yep...me too. Though I made about $12k

and piled up loans - which will be there the rest of my life. And I earned my own through assistantships and teaching adjunct at two different colleges. . .which slowed down my dissertation, but I had to make ends meet.

Funny thing is that now I'm a full-time non-tenured instructor making twice that 17k on the chart, still working on the dissertation, and don't live any better than I did as a grad student.

[QC]

58. Our stories are remarkably alike.

I finally finished the dissertation, while working full time, and now have tenure, but thanks to those loan payments getting 20% of my income off the top, I still live much like I did in grad school.

It's a good thing grad school taught me how to live cheap, I guess.

[leftyclimber]

76. I'm betting they include med school residents in that figure, and maybe postdocs.

At my U. they make 30-35K while resident-ing. Also some of the hard sciences grad students, especially in biomedical research, get paid pretty well. I was floored to find out that my microbiology Ph.D. student neighbor was making about half again what I was when I have one of the better assistantships in the Uni (near the mean above). If it makes you feel better, 17K as a grad student doesn't go very far in this high-rent town. Even though we get tuition waivers we're required to pay almost 3 grand in student fees. I'm either going to have to stay in school for the rest of my life so I get out of my loans when I die, or win the lottery to get the damn things paid off.

[NJCher]

13. I'm sure you all know the theory

But I'll reiterate it:

The football coach might make those affiliated with the university proud. They respond with more donations to the institution. In addition, there are all kinds of ancilliary sales that go with that pride.

I'm not saying I agree with it but admittedly, it is one way numbskulls will take pride in a university when they wouldn't even have noticed it if it didn't have a terrific football team.


Cher

[QC]

16. OTOH, spending millions on associate vice subdeans doesn't bring in a penny,

but the colleges do it anyway.

As I said above, it's easy to get upset about the coaches, but the real drain is administration.

[RaleighNCDUer]

43. Which, of course, is why Harvard is languishing. nt

[izquierdista]

15. What an annoyance

Just think of how successful minor league football could be if they didn't have to pay for professors and provosts and deans and other distractions!

[kath]

49. "minor league football" -- you nailed it. The purpose of universities should be education - they

should NOT be functioning as the minor league systems for football and basketball.
Let football and basketball develop their own minor league systems, like baseball has.

[Bigmack]

20. I can't believe most of these posts...

Seems to me like the OP simply questions the priorities our society puts on the value of different jobs.

How about we use a different scale, so the football fans won't get all clenched?

The CEO of CIGNA makes $5,883 an hour, but the aide who hustles the bedpans makes $7. The bedpans are more important to the actual patient.. and society in general.

The football program... sorry folks.... isn't as important as turning out educated, productive citizens.

It's a fucking game!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Actually, pro sports are the REAL religion of America

Even in churches, short sermons are the rule on Super Bowl Sunday.

[ProgressiveFool]

28. who was getting clenched? I'm a huge Cal football fan, and even I think Ted's overpaid /nt

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Warpy]

34. I worked at a university hospital years ago

and it was a large facility, a teaching hospital.

I was appalled to find out its budget was about 10% less than the budget for the school's football team!

It wasn't even a good football team. They were perennial losers.

Academic institutions need to drop sports. Pro sports would be better served by state sports institutions, schools that would teach athletes what they needed to know to be public school coaches or, if they made it to the pros, how to manage their money.

Universities would be far different places if they were able to get out from under that rah-rah burden of football teams.

[Umbral]

35. So how does this relate to K-12 education?

It doesn't, except as a reflection of what 'we' value as a society.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

45. Well there are those who think that a BA is the new high school diploma

Yes that is flippant hyperbole, but there is some truth to that

[SeekerBlue]

37. I am admin staffer in an academic department at a R1 state university

If anything, academics are overpaid, compared with the rest of us. They don't even have fixed hours! They come in two hours a week to teach courses and spend the rest of their time doing research and writing at their own convenience. This can hardly be compared to a regular, 8-5 job. I also don't care that they got a PhD. For the most part, PhDs are funded, meaning they graduated with no student debt. I have a BA and an MA and owe $45,000 in student loans, and the best job I can get is as a secretary at the school I got my BA from. I feel incredibly lucky to have this job, and the health insurance and pension that come with it (though I expect to see both these benefits go well before I reach retirement age). I should add I am talking about liberal arts here, and I have less resentment toward professors working in the sciences, since their work has more real-world applications (and I say this as someone with an MA in a humanities field!).

Also, at my university, which has a consistently top-five ranked Division I football team, our athletics department is 100% self-funded. They receive ZERO funding from the university, the university's academic endowments, or the state government (i.e. the taxpayer). They have so successfully managed themselves over the past twenty years that they now bring in millions in revenue, which they continue to recycle through the athletics department, bringing in the best talent the best coaches, and building the best facilities. Do I think this shows misplaced priorities? Yeah, probably. But I just wanted to make it clear that their high level of funding does not DECREASE academic funding. Quite the contrary; the high profile the school receives due to its athletics successes only draws attention and funding for academics.

Also, our football coach makes way more than that.

:P

[QC]

40. If you want to work a professors's hours, go get a Ph.D. and be a professor.

I hear that argument from the staff where I teach, and I have little sympathy for it.

It's like me complaining that flight attendants get to travel a lot more than I do or that lifeguards go to the beach a lot.

Besides that, I don't see the office staff around at 9:30 P.M., when I am leaving after teaching a night class, and I don't see them carrying home piles of papers every evening and every weekend.

I would add that I am in an institution primarily devoted to teaching. I am carrying an 18-hour load right now, all of them writing classes, and most of them over-enrolled, since we are under a "hard freeze" that only seems to affect faculty hiring.

I do know professors of the type you described--I did all of their grading for them in grad school--but most of us out here are not working at R1 publishing companies.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

44. I am actually at the point where just about everything is submitted on line

About all I carry to/from campus is a small computer and my lunch.

[QC]

47. Me too, and that is still carrying work home.

I have my course management site and my campus webmail open in other windows right now.

The point is that we do not necessarily have to be in our offices, at our desks, to be working. We are not line workers at the cracker factory.

I love having work submitted online, like you. Not only can I work from my laptop, but I also don't have to wonder what has been turned in or not. I was initially a skeptic about course management programs, having used some of the very clunky, clumsy ones in the early days, but they really are a big help. They free us of a lot of the housekeeping so that we can devote that time to teaching.

[SeekerBlue]

68. "We are not line workers at the cracker factory."

Says it all about the elitism and entitlement I am sick to death of.

Almost everyone else who has a job has set hours and is micromanaged. Student loan debt notwithstanding, I would take a massive pay cut to have that type of flexibility and autonomy. But it just ain't reality for most people. Most of us are, indeed, monkeys. Ah, capitalism.

[alcibiades_mystery]

71. Read

Evan Watkins. Work Time: English Departments and the Circulation of Cultural Value.

You'll find that many of the faculty you've imagined as enemies are far from that. Unless, of course, it's too obscurantist for you.

[QC]

74. It says quite a lot about your own issues, which are best left unexplored.

My point was that I generally do not have to be in a particular place to do my job, like a line worker--such as my father!--who is operating a machine in a fixed location.

[leftyclimber]

79. It's not as flexible as you think it is.

If you're at an R1 and your faculty is anything like mine is, they're working upwards of 70 hours a week, driving all over the place to get information they need, working on weekends, and not having a lot of time for things like a life outside of work. Meanwhile they're getting micromanaged by the deans -- you just don't see it -- and pulling all-nighters trying to write yet another grant they likely won't get and finish another article that if it isn't published means the end of their career.

On the surface it looks like a really cushy job, but it's extremely high-pressure work. You're welcome, however, to think otherwise.

[SeekerBlue]

67. I was smart enough to stop after the MA

Realizing that there was a lot of political ass-kissing involved in the profession, and that there would be no jobs for me. Further, a PhD outside academia would make one nigh unemployable. Having a humanities MA is bad enough.

I can see getting a PhD in certain subjects; but not in humanities, no way.

And, yes, I am talking about R1 publishing machines. I doubt most professors at smaller universities, some SLACS, and all less respected state schools make what our professors do. They probably make more like what I make. Which is indeed a shame, considering they worked just as hard to get a PhD as some of the cocooned folks I see every day.

I would be happy to work at 9:30pm if it meant I could work at home, or in a library, or in a coffee shop. For me, being chained to a desk 40+ hours a week is soul destroying. The only reason I am doing it - ironically enough - is to pay off the student loans I was ignorant enough to take out as a teenager whose parents were so proud she was the first in the family to attend a four year university.

Peace.

[kevinbgoode]

54. I used to work an 8-5 job, and went home without taking work home.

Now I'm one of those instructors, and have to spend more time at home working than I could ever get in an office sitting from 8-5. Class prep takes hours; grading meaningful assignments take even longer; reading 106 term papers? Days. And then there is all the increasing amount of paperwork required for everything under the sun from the Administration, the students who need to meet with you, the evening commitments to community service, committee memberships, guest lectures, and pursuing research to meet University standards for promotion. It's a 24/7 job - and I've had semesters where I didn't have the time to watch a simple DVD at home.

P.S. My salary is half that posted on the graph for non-tenured faculty.

[QC]

55. Thank you. n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

61. I work 60-80 hour weeks "doing research and writing at my own convenience"

I just get to pick which 60-80.

I gave up 6 years of income earning my PhD.

[SeekerBlue]

69. I think this may be true for assistant professors trying to get tenure

Beyond that, I'm not buying it. I see what our faculty do. They resent coming in more than two days per week. Those who do, because (horror!) they have to teach more than one class per term, insist on leaving at 2pm so they can have their daily swim.

I'm sorry if I don't have more sympathy. I get tired of all the privilege claimed and taken for granted by people doing largely arcane and near-pointless "work" - such as the obscurantist, postmodern articles I see every day. I am not really talking about people doing research in astronomy or public health. It just seems like many humanities professors live in a cocoon. I can see why they're so concerned with keeping things exclusive, and maintaining the glut of young PhDs on the market. It's a swell gig, if you can get it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

70. Go get your PhD and run the gauntlet

I have little sympathy for folks who haven't walked the walk, but think they know the score.

It's hard fucking work, and costly in all kinds of ways. You're looking at a very limited picture and making judgments, which is fine, but forgive me if - having walked the walk - I don't consider your judgment on this particularly valuable. Every secretary in a law firm thinks he or she could easily be a lawyer, too. Go try, then we'll talk.

[Egalitariat]

39. The tenured or un-tenured Econ 101 professors could explain the disparity in a couple of minutes

[Zynx]

57. Econ 101 explains away a lot of things. It doesn't mean it is right (morally).

Econ 101 is a very stylized view of the world where all compensation and all prices are completely justified. By the way I am an econ major.

[QC]

60. The notion that the market is the ultimate arbiter of the value of all things

is one of our biggest problems in America.

[Zynx]

77. Econ 101 teaches us to accept any price as fundamentally good and that somehow

it reflects the proper value of a product. According to Econ 101 asset bubbles cannot exist because if goods (or financial assets) are clearing at those prices, that must be the actual underlying value of those assets.

[QC]

80. Yeah. A crack dealer is worth more to society than a nurse.

Market fundamentalism is one of our great afflictions in America. I keep hoping that people will wake up and see through it, but so far I see no signs of that happening.

[RaleighNCDUer]

41. Nice try, but you will never get away with attacking peoples' religion. nt

[Fire1]

59. Totally unbalanced. This is indicative of our priorities. n/t

[wickerwoman]

62. I'm more inclined to think it's this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8991180

[lunatica]

63. The reason for that is that the Sports departments

Get the most money for the Universities. Alumni tend to give to the department where they majored and to the Sports Department because they stay loyal to their college teams.

If a graph is made to show the donations given to the different departments the Sports Department would spike just like that.

[mbee]

65. Academic administration is comprised of mostly women

and there's a reason for that they accept low pay!

[Petrushka]

72. How do those salaries compare with those of professionals in the private sector?

As a retiree with a granddaughter entering high-school this coming Wednesday, I'm curious: How do
teachers' salaries compare with those of professionals in the private sector?

I'm wondering not only because I recently moved from West Virginia to Ohio, but because I read an
interesting front-page story inThe Columbus Dispatch last Sunday, August 16th---"Teacher
salaries raising eyebrows: Some ask if educators are sharing the pain"---but, other than giving what
percentage the teachers' salaries were raised (or frozen) in different districts locally, there were
no wage or salary figures for comparison between any public or private sector of the workforce.

Here's a link to the article I read:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/08/16/TeacherPay.ART_ART_08-16-09_A1_ODEPI8P.html

If anyone can steer me toward something that'll answer my question, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

[WeCanWorkItOut]

75. Bureau of Labor Stats gives a nice overview (56k elementary teacher)

This is for Columbus teachers in 2008:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_18140.htm#b25-0000

Whereas the pre-school teacher makes 22k
a civil engineer makes 71k
a general practitioner makes 180 k.

[Petrushka]

81. Thank you. I'll bookmark that link to look at more closely later. (eom)

[Liberal_in_LA]

73. nice chart. Like how the coach's salary goes off the scale. lol

[Vidar]

78. K&R.