I'm sorry, this (excerpt below) is just not the case for most faculty and
depends on old prejudices and extraordinarily outdated assumptions about
what it is to be a prof.  I am now in my little office, at 7 pm, trying to
finish up my Web sites and much other organizational work for my classes,
which begin tomorrow.  I work 6-7 days a week on various aspects of
teaching, from preparing lectures, giving them, consulting with students,
working with students who are doing independent study projects,
researching and ordering slides at the slide library, selecting books for
the book library (they haven't had anyone in my field for many years and
are behind in ordering) and on and on.
        I've worked this schedule--we're on the quarter system, which
should be outlawed as cruel and unusual punishment--since mid-August.
Part of this workload derives from the fact that some of my courses are
new and I am new to this schedule.  I receive minimal assistance from my
department and I have recently learned that the tenure-track position here
that I applied for is going to be offered instead to one of three ABD
candidates (My PhD is from 1997).  I recently heard one faculty member
refer to the Web sites I built as "the department's".
        Bad as I have it, the students have it worse.  Although ostensibly
a PhD program, it offers almost no graduate classes; students have to
take "independent studies" projects which almost always culminate in
incompletes. There is very little financial support for the students,
although it's not like the money is going into the pockets of the
professors.  Lack of the basic amenities here for everyone has led to a
system of accomodation where conduct that would not be allowed in
better-off programs is tolerated here as a sort of unspoken compensation.
        I don't know what Ross Weeks does, but I teach five courses per
year and that is a lot indeed.  "Two or three" courses on the semester
system would be about equivalent, but most people I know on the ss at most
(but not all) state universities teach five courses per semester to be
full-time.  If you teach four, you are considered part-time and don't get
benefits and are paid less.  Please understand that the vast majority of
students attend and faculty teach at state universities.  What may be
happening at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton has no relation with what goes on
at state universities, although a big problem at the latter is the
delusional attempts by some to run their programs along Ivy League
guidelines with budgets and staffing that are sometimes inferior,
proportionally, to that of the local community college.
        The other delusion, of course, is that the so-called good times
supposedly now being enjoyed by all have made any effect on many areas
of higher education.  Positions are still frozen, adjuncts are still being
hired by universities that now know that they can get away with larger
classes, low salaries and no benefits.  Here in Oregon there is a tv show
on the local PBS channel that discusses life here; they did one show on
higher education in which the attempt by some local politicians to start a
new university at Bend was roundly decried as a waste of the already very
limited funds to create yet another middling-quality state university.
Most of the panel seemed to think that the state ought to try to beef up
the engineering and computer science programs in order to attract more
students to some of the few programs where graduates can make money.  So
much for the humanities!
        Sorry this has become so long but this thread has gotten quite
irritating; now, I've probably made it worse.

        Adrienne DeAngelis



On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Ross Weeks wrote:

> I think teaching as a "noble position" goes back years when the work
> involved much self-sacrifice -- mainly financial.
>
> Nowadays there may be far too many professors who subordinate their teaching
> responsibilities to the pursuits of research, writing, consulting and even
> sideline businesses.  They are relatively well paid in many institutions for
> teaching loads that have declined to just two or maybe three courses per
> semester.  (In a great many others, that decline has not occurred and salary
> scales are still unacceptably low.)  The pressure to show academic
> productivity (research, publishing, etc.) is well known -- the "publish or
> perish" syndrome of the last few decades.
etc, etc, etc.

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