Adjunct teachers and college students: what does your university pay per three credit hour course?

[hedgehog]

What does your university charge per three credit hour course?

I think if the two numbers are compared, it will turn out that offering a course is pure profit for a university once the 2nd or 3rd student signs up!

[Generic Other]

1. The tuition students pay to take one professor's fall classes

pays for that instructor's yearly salary with money to spare, and this is for a tenured professor at a state community college. Much of the profit made from the instructor's labor goes to pay for top heavy administrative costs.

Adjuncts make a third of that. They call themselves migrant workers because they are up and down the freeway with classes in other communities. Two students' tuition pay for the salary of one adjunct. That leaves upwards of 48 other students if the adjunct has two classes. Easy to see why adjuncts are attractive to colleges.

The one obstacle is accreditation. These folks take a dim view to any school with too many adjuncts. As do faculty unions.

But it is easy to see the system abuses adjuncts and devalues the work of all academics in the process.

[hedgehog]

2. "But it is easy to see the system abuses adjuncts and devalues the work of all academics in the

process"

Excellent point!

What professor is going to ask for a raise or lighter work load when cheap replacements are at hand!

[mike_c]

3. I don't think you know how tuition works, at least at state universities....

First, what the university charges students is only a portion of their cost of attendance, and none of it is "profit." None.

Not. One. Dime.

The cost of attendance is subsidized by the state legislature, which pays at least some of the cost of attendance and in many cases pays the majority of that cost. The reason tuition costs are currently rising in most states is that legislatures are disinvesting in public higher ed, just like they're disinvesting in education generally. Universities-- at least state universities-- are forced to raise tuition to fill the funding hole left behind by the legislature.

If you are interested in the salaries of lecturers at my university (the California State University) they are online at http://calstate.edu/HRAdm/SalarySchedule/SalaryGrid.aspx?S1=1&F1=2358&D1=0&Page=1&Recs=15 . Our non-tenure track faculty have the rank of lecturer-- adjunct faculty in the CSU are unpaid, usually work somewhere else, and typically have no teaching duties. Adjunct status is simply a way of associating themselves with the university, for example to write grants with university faculty, or to advise graduate students who might be working with them.

There are five lecturer salary ranges, mostly depending upon academic qualifications, and the salaries listed are monthly wages for full time appointments, which would typically mean 12-15 Weighted Teaching Units per semester, so a single 3 credit course would pay approximately one quarter of the listed salaries. The lowest end of Range 1-- which would typically be a temporary appointment without a PhD or other terminal degree-- is $2,921/month and the high end of Range 5 is $10,700/month. Very few lecturers in the CSU make the high end of Range 5, I can assure you. The most common is probably Range 2, which pays $3,458-$4,652/month for a full time appointment.

Student tuition at a CSU campus is currently $5,500/year for state resident full time students, so the cost to students for a three unit, one semester course would be something like $700 if they were full time students. I believe the state currently pays about 60 percent or so of tuition, so taxpayers kick in about $850 additional for each student that attends that hypothetical 3 unit class.

[hedgehog]

5. I think the tuitions and wages you list should be an example for every university-

and every state legislature. Here in New York, my daughter was charged $1100 for a summer course.


Too many legislatures are toying with the idea of letting state universities go private.

The OP was inspired by this story:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/death-of-an-adjunct-703773/

[mike_c]

7. I believe Duquesne is a private school, a de facto for-profit university....

Buy low, sell high is the capitalist motto. That's one reason I prefer working at public universities.

[Generic Other]

14. How Duquesne treated a 25 year adjunct! SHOCKING

Underpaid 83-Year-Old Professor Died Trying to Make Ends Meet by Working Night Shift at Eat an' Save

On Sept. 1, Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, passed away at the age of 83. She died as the result of a massive heart attack she suffered two weeks before. As it turned out, I may have been the last person she talked to.

On Aug. 16, I received a call from a very upset Margaret Mary. She told me that she was under an incredible amount of stress. She was receiving radiation therapy for the cancer that had just returned to her, she was living nearly homeless because she could not afford the upkeep on her home, which was literally falling in on itself, and now, she explained, she had received another indignity -- a letter from Adult Protective Services telling her that someone had referred her case to them saying that she needed assistance in taking care of herself. The letter said that if she did not meet with the caseworker the following Monday, her case would be turned over to Orphans' Court.

For a proud professional like Margaret Mary, this was the last straw; she was mortified. She begged me to call Adult Protective Services and tell them to leave her alone, that she could take care of herself and did not need their help. I agreed to. Sadly, a couple of hours later, she was found on her front lawn, unconscious from a heart attack. She never regained consciousness.

Meanwhile, I called Adult Protective Services right after talking to Margaret Mary, and I explained the situation. I said that she had just been let go from her job as a professor at Duquesne, that she was given no severance or retirement benefits, and that the reason she was having trouble taking care of herself was because she was living in extreme poverty. The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, "She was a professor?" I said yes. The case- worker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help.

Of course, what the case-worker didn't understand was that Margaret Mary was an adjunct professor, meaning that, unlike a well-paid tenured professor, Margaret Mary worked on a contract basis from semester to semester, with no job security, no benefits and with a salary of between $3,000 and just over $3,500 per three-credit course. Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities.

http://admin.alternet.org/economy/underpaid-83-year-old-professor-died-trying-make-ends-meet-working-night-shift-eat-save?akid=10959.261512.Pqdrdx&rd=1&src=newsletter899235&t=9&paging=off

[cloudbase]

4. At Lone Star College

it's right at @2,500.

Oops, that's what an adjunct professor receives. Tuition is just over $100, but there are plenty of fees added on top of that that almost double the tuition cost.

[Xithras]

6. My last courses were about $950 per credit hour.

So about $2850 to teach a single three credit hour course. It was decent money back when online learning was new and the tenured guys didn't want anything to do with teaching over the Internet, because adjuncts could backstop their classroom earnings with a handful of easy-to-teach online sections. The tenured guys eventually figured this out, and since they get first pick on everything, the adjuncts can't get anywhere near those courses anymore.

I believe that we were charging around $370 per credit.

But the school didn't make a dime on that. Tuition and fees charged to the students don't come anywhere close to covering the cost of running a college. Most of the money used to keep the lights on came from the taxpayers in the great state of California.

[Vashta Nerada]

8. If the taxpayers are paying for the lights to be on...

Then why has my tuition been going up every year for the last 4 years?

[Xithras]

9. Because the cost of education is rising, and the government is cutting.

Students are caught in the middle and are asked to pay more and more to compensate.

I no longer teach and don't have the current numbers, but the last numbers I saw at the CSU worked out so that the student paid about $5000 per year (total tuition and fees), while the state paid in another $7000 per year or so. The student paid a bit under half the cost of their education. Because the cost of educating one student is about $12k per year and isn't going anywhere but up, the students have to pay more in as the state reduces its contribution.

[aikoaiko]

11. At one time state's contributed 75% of costs of Univ, now its closer to 50%

[aikoaiko]

10. Pay: ~$2500 Charge: $455

The 6th student covers the cost of a part-time instructor at my university.

[hedgehog]

12. and how many of those adjuncts end up in front of a lecture hall

full of students?

[aikoaiko]

13. most of them in are in classes less than 25 in ENG 101, ENG 102

Our other gen ed classes are capped at 45 with a few exceptions.

[FarCenter]

15. Pay $1200, charge $346.50 at the community college.