<story><title>Enough&apos;s enough: Contract teaching at a Canadian University</title><url>https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/enoughs-enough-6c56afe36d00</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lazare</author><text>Universities don&amp;#x27;t offer any more than they have to.  Apparently you can pay less than $30k a year to get a hard-working instructor with a Phd to teach your students.  So, that&amp;#x27;s what they do.  I&amp;#x27;m sure this guy is awesome, but the reason he&amp;#x27;s being offered a pittance is because he and the people like him will accept it.  If nobody would teach classes for less than $50k, then that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;d get paid.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the flip side of the big companies complaining about a skills shortage and advocating for increased immigration.  Yeah, it&amp;#x27;s hard to hire an engineer in Silicon Valley for peanuts.  But there&amp;#x27;s no god given right to be able to hire cheap labour, and if you really want to hire someone, pay the market rate, or stop whining about it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also not thrilled by the email he sent the student.  I feel like communicating with students outside of class time is absolutely part of the job of instructor; his email reads to me like someone saying &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not paid enough to do the entire job I was hired for&amp;quot;.  That wouldn&amp;#x27;t fly in any other context.  If he decided to just not show up to some lectures he was hired to teach, what would the university say if he told them he wasn&amp;#x27;t being paid enough to attend every class?  He may be dealing with a shitty deal from the administratio, but passing it along to those even weaker than him is hardly admirable.&lt;p&gt;Now, despite my tone above, I am sympathetic.  He&amp;#x27;s doing a crap job for little pay.  I have empathy for him!  But he&amp;#x27;s the one who signed up to do a crap job for little pay, and keeps signing up to do it again every year.  And that makes him part of the problem.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there&amp;#x27;s only so many teaching slots available, and there&amp;#x27;s a fuckton of Phd graduates desperate to obtain one regardless of the salary or employment terms.  Doubling the salary won&amp;#x27;t increase the number of teaching slots available (more likely decrease it), and it won&amp;#x27;t decrease the number of Phd grads looking to teach (it would absolutely increase it).  Academia is already a lottery where the many chase the tiny number of tenure slots; does making the competition even fiercer and more Darwinian help improve the fairness?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrgriscom</author><text>This is literally the least interesting response one can make to this issue. Both parties are offering&amp;#x2F;accepting what the market will bear? Obviously! That&amp;#x27;s what makes it the market. You&amp;#x27;re stating a tautology.&lt;p&gt;The interesting issues at hand are the cultural factors of academia that cause so many highly qualified people to work for such astoundingly little money. Are bright young people being indoctrinated with a sense of personal sacrifice for the cause of &amp;#x27;higher learning&amp;#x27;, not unlike a cult? Are those self-issued &amp;#x27;high qualifications&amp;#x27; not actually as valuable as they are pretended to be? Those are the interesting questions rather than just going &amp;quot;hurr durr supply and demand&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Not like the supply-and-demand argument excuses anything, either. The entire history of labor protections is that previous practices that the market would bear were deemed socially unjust and no longer permitted, even if you could still find people desperate enough to agree to them. Saying &amp;quot;you took the job; don&amp;#x27;t complain&amp;quot; simply isn&amp;#x27;t valid.</text></comment>
<story><title>Enough&apos;s enough: Contract teaching at a Canadian University</title><url>https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/enoughs-enough-6c56afe36d00</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lazare</author><text>Universities don&amp;#x27;t offer any more than they have to.  Apparently you can pay less than $30k a year to get a hard-working instructor with a Phd to teach your students.  So, that&amp;#x27;s what they do.  I&amp;#x27;m sure this guy is awesome, but the reason he&amp;#x27;s being offered a pittance is because he and the people like him will accept it.  If nobody would teach classes for less than $50k, then that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;d get paid.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the flip side of the big companies complaining about a skills shortage and advocating for increased immigration.  Yeah, it&amp;#x27;s hard to hire an engineer in Silicon Valley for peanuts.  But there&amp;#x27;s no god given right to be able to hire cheap labour, and if you really want to hire someone, pay the market rate, or stop whining about it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also not thrilled by the email he sent the student.  I feel like communicating with students outside of class time is absolutely part of the job of instructor; his email reads to me like someone saying &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not paid enough to do the entire job I was hired for&amp;quot;.  That wouldn&amp;#x27;t fly in any other context.  If he decided to just not show up to some lectures he was hired to teach, what would the university say if he told them he wasn&amp;#x27;t being paid enough to attend every class?  He may be dealing with a shitty deal from the administratio, but passing it along to those even weaker than him is hardly admirable.&lt;p&gt;Now, despite my tone above, I am sympathetic.  He&amp;#x27;s doing a crap job for little pay.  I have empathy for him!  But he&amp;#x27;s the one who signed up to do a crap job for little pay, and keeps signing up to do it again every year.  And that makes him part of the problem.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, there&amp;#x27;s only so many teaching slots available, and there&amp;#x27;s a fuckton of Phd graduates desperate to obtain one regardless of the salary or employment terms.  Doubling the salary won&amp;#x27;t increase the number of teaching slots available (more likely decrease it), and it won&amp;#x27;t decrease the number of Phd grads looking to teach (it would absolutely increase it).  Academia is already a lottery where the many chase the tiny number of tenure slots; does making the competition even fiercer and more Darwinian help improve the fairness?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joesmo</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s getting paid hourly and has already put in 55 free hours to teach the course properly. How many more free hours do you expect from him? I think the email he sent the students is spot on. Perhaps if they&amp;#x27;re distressed enough, they will put pressure on the university to pay their teachers what they&amp;#x27;re worth.&lt;p&gt;Yes, he might be &amp;quot;part of the problem&amp;quot; but it&amp;#x27;s not like he can choose not to be without starving. Nor can other professors. Perhaps with union help, but they don&amp;#x27;t seem to help. I don&amp;#x27;t see how blame slinging helps here at all.</text></comment>