Monday, March 07, 2011
Higher Education, Pay, and Unions
Just did a search and discovered:
At University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, full-time English Instructors in 2010-11 made around $28,500. That's a job that requires a Masters Degree (6 years of education with accompanying tuition/debt). I would hazard that the same folks could probably work overtime each term plus teach a class in the summer and make an additional $4000 - $6000, maybe — if the classes are available and the department decides to give them to instructors.
UIUC has no faculty unions.
In 2001, I was hired as an Instructor at Northern Illinois University. At the time, salary was $22,000. A few months after I was hired, the union completed negotiations that brought Instructor salaries up to $27,500 and made it retroactive to the beginning of the year. The collective bargaining agreement also set up a schedule for raises over the next several years.
UIUC's faculty have had merit and other pay raises recently at a level of around 4%.
Unionized universities in Illinois and the surrounding states have had raises at around 16%.
Ultimately, 10 years later, and the un-unionized university instructors (and you should have no doubt - your children are taught by instructors, esp. in the first two years of school, as much or more than they are taught by graduate students [compensated with tuition and a stipend usually somewhere in the ballpark of $10,000 a year for teaching 3-4 classes each year, or about half what an instructor teaches], and particularly more than they are taught by actual professors) are making only $1000 more each year than the unionized teachers were making in 2001.
You do the math, and don't forget to factor in the 6 years (minimum) of university study (undergrad and grad) required to get that job. Don't forget the accompanying debt.
Get rid of the Instructors, and you can double the pay to hire an Assistant Prof (who needed at least 8 years of school, and maybe more like 11, to be qualified for the job). Of course, that Prof will teach less than an instructor (in an ideal situation, which no school currently has in this economic climate) because s/he is expected to be publishing and professionalizing in order to be eligible for tenure and promotion (the accomplishment of which is partly responsible for the school's accreditation). It can take such profs, making $45,000 - $60,000 as long as 5 years to successfully earn tenure and a raise to the $50,000 - $80,000 range, and there's no guarantee unless they go through the process again (5-10 years later?) that they'll get up to the $75,000 - $150,000 range of the Full Professor.
Those figures are for un-unionized professorial faculty. At unionized schools, bump it up some.
That's for English.
A significant portion of my students every year that I taught university-level English 101 could not adequately write nor communicate professionally or academically in English (or any other language), meaning such classes were not merely required for graduation but also necessary for academic success.
This is the value we place on education? No wonder educators at any level seek out union representation.
so sez Matt Duncan at 10:42 PM
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