Your average college professor earns less than a sanitation worker.....

[Gaffer213]

college is a fuckin scam anyway so who cares

[antoniotitus]

I've worked sanitation. I started out at $9 an hour. I made $70 a day for the dangers I was putting myself in of contamination. Plus I was working at a ci's ci's pizza and made $250 a week. I made $3100 a month. My military state of living pay, paid my rent, and all my bills. Now I'm an officer that gets no respect because I didn't attend college.

[antoniotitus]

By the way I was 18 at the time. I'm now 21.

[Spittinglama]

u mad? GO RED FOXES

[mathcernea]

Yeah it's horse s*** how they nickel and dime adjuncts. They really spit in our faces, especially if they advertise it with $50 / hour (how many hours?) I'm glad I got out of it after one semester. Equally mindboggling is how incompetent full-time tenured faculty can sometimes (not always) be. You're right; adjuncts need to unite, and you're ballzy to be one of the first to sound the call. I wish you the best of luck. Let me know if things improve or if you want to talk more about it.

[CollegeReform]

Colleges need drastic reforms! Let's start a movement to change things. Type Reform Higher Education Now in the search box on Facebook or click CollegeReform below.

[ddoonnhh]

I had no idea that the situation described here was a fact. Isn't Marist like most Colleges/Universities, a place where liberalism thrives and where our young students are told that big business, big banks, big auto, big wall street, where the chosen few propsper at the expense of the masses. So Marist has its own chosen few? I assumed that the goal would be for every professor to enjoy the same benefits. Shouldnt the lucky 30% volunteer pay cuts to help those less fortunate?

[perfectbark]

@ddoonnhh

a full time teaching associate at Marist with a masters degree and with a 5 course load makes somewhere around $38 or $39K. It is by far the lowest paid profession.

[perfectbark]

@jgelfuso8

I actually did make more money in high school and that was a long time ago. Send me a private email if you are interested in assembling somewhere off campus to investigate what our options are.

[perfectbark]

@jgelfuso8

are you willing to take the risk of not signing your contract?

[alicat90210]

were you surprised to find your pay check was so low? i mean, did you not know how much your salary was when you completed an entire semester here? youre expected to have another job if youre a part time professor. work somewhere else...

[perfectbark]

@alicat90210

Well, many, if not most of the adjunct faculty at Marist work as high school teachers or in the private sector somewhere. But dismissively declaring that part-time faculty should work somewhere else does not address the issue of fair pay. I'm thinking that I spent over 5 hours yesterday, my day off, correcting and grading papers and 48 exams, entering the scores into my gradebook, etc.

The question is .... WHY does Marist hire so many pt faculty in the first place??

[perfectbark]

@perfectbark

The answer is, of course, to evade paying a fair wage and benefits to full time faculty. I don't recall even having an adjunct instructor in either college or graduate school.

[ArroganceClause]

how much do adjunct faculty get paid? We need some numbers!

[MrRomple]

What do you have against janitors and street sweepers?

[qbslug]

Academics are expected to be different from the rest of the world and not care about salary. it seems to be the only job sector where you are labeled a sell out if you care about money.

[warwickmark]

Well that might be the end of your career... However like you say if everyone joined together things would change. The need to work and pay for the things we are slave to may be against the fight, but it is worth noting that the ones who have enslaved us in this way are also responsible for the lowering of pay packets. Financial independence is a dangerous thing to employers, it cuts into profits.

[shortname9]

Supply and Demand. Learn it.

[postiez]

man, that "literally crumbs" thing really took away from your argument

[davidmendez01]

They will never know it when the Revolution is on their doorsteps

[Brismo7]

They LITERALLY feed you crumbs? lol.

[perfectbark]

@Brismo7

well, it has its perks. At christmas time we get gingerbread crumbs.

[Alannewfaculty]

Well done Jeffrey. May I invite you to join New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Faculty. Look at our site, and our newsletter. And look also at cringing liberal elite and other sites for adjunct news from people like you who have been through it. We need more folks like you. Thanks. Alan Trevithick

[jeffreywolfe1]

@Alannewfaculty Thank you Alan. I will follow up on your suggestion. Keep up the fight! Sincerely,

Jeffrey Wolfe

[DrMinParaguay]

I doubt the veracity of this piece,however if factual, it is as it should be as sanitation workers provide a much more valuable service to society.

[scienceprof2323]

You are a brave soul. Thank you for saying what needed to be said. College is the largest unregulated business in America. They charge top dollar, convince everyone that we all need a college education, then pay the professors peanuts. I wonder where all that tuition money is going? As mentioned below, the sad truth is that adjuncts are dispensable. When you think about it, if this was happening in a 3rd world country, all those touchy-feely types would be protesting this abomination.

[perfectbark]

@scienceprof2323

I've been thinking for quite a while that there should be some nucleus around which the part-time MAJORITY can use as a vehicle to bring legitimate concerns about such matters as compensation, working conditions, office space for PT faculty and class size to administration, perhaps Murray himself. Let me know what you think.

[jeffreywolfe1]

@perfectbark

I thing affiliates at Marist should unionize and bring their concerns to Murray and Co. with appropriate legal backing to put some teeth into the "discussion." As for how the affiliates unionize, we should talk to affiliates at SUNY, as they indeed are unionized. I believe there is the "National Association of University Professors," and other groups who exist and might be able to help in this regard.

[jeffreywolfe1]

@scienceprof2323 I don't know if our collective apathy is situational and/or genetic. What I have found to be true is that if one person makes a stand, it becomes easier for others to also make a stand. I hope my message becomes extremely widespread, and that ALL college teachers, not merely affiliates, begin to fight for their rights against a system and an entrenched elite that must become more humane.

[jeffreywolfe1]

@scienceprof2323 What can you say about the U.S. when Ukraine came to a grinding halt when its citizens protested the theft of the presidency from the candidate who ultimately suffered dioxin poisoning, and untimately prevailed?! We care more about the judges on American Idol than those on the Supreme Court. If we don't go to the streets over stolen presidential elections, I am hardpressed to think that affiliates will actually stand up for themselves. I made this video: please prove me wrong!

[Dave53R]

Well done! Higher education as well as general education has been highly underrated and underpaid.

[perfectbark]

Thank you Jeff. Marist is no different than corporate America or the hospital across the street or the computer manufacturer down the road, GROTESQUELY overpaid executives exploiting cheap, underemployed labor.

The fact is, I'm a little tired of trying to teach students who don't come to class with something to write with or write on, so what do I have to lose anyway?

Let's plant some trees, if we plant enough of them the parents may think that we're in the same league as Vassar.

[LikemindedProf]

Amen, and I applaud your courage for saying what so many of us think on a semestral (daily? hourly?) basis. You should feel honored, though, that the sciences are so valued; over in liberal arts, my own annual salary, if granted a "full" course load, is $12K!

Your call to action, however, forgets an important detail of the adjunct model: we are expendable. If we refuse to accept our meager ration, we are discarded and replaced by a fresh cohort of idealistic young adjuncts. That's the point.