For years I have been
reluctant to write about the problem of “compression” for fear of sounding like
sour grapes. Recently, however, I heard
a television commentator assert that our colleges are so expensive because professors
get paid too much. This is a serious
misunderstanding.
Before I proceed, let me
make several things clear. I love
college teaching. I also love the
freedom it provides to pursue scholarship.
Moreover, my wife and I live comfortably. While the issues I am about to discuss
rankle, I am a big boy who freely chose to do what I am doing.
So what is compression? Over the last couple of decades the salary
differential between newly hired and senior faculty has shrunk. It is currently almost at the vanishing
point. Recent Ph.D.’s with no experience
and few publications earn nearly as much as the most productive full
professors.
Let me be specific. I earn scarcely more than $10,000 above my
novice colleagues. Despite a quarter of
a century at Kennesaw State, sixteen published books, many journal articles,
hundreds of newspaper columns, editorship of a professional journal, and
excellent teaching evaluations, my income has remained static. Raises, when they come, are trivial.
Why is this so? The answer is that if our university did not
compete to attract competent junior faculty, our assistant professors would be
a sorry lot. As a consequence, the funds
to pay them are extracted from the budget that might pay me.
Although faculty at elite
institutions do well financially, those at schools like Kennesaw do not. I literally make fifty thousand dollars less
than is paid to high school teachers in places like Chicago. I actually make less than many police
officers.
To make matters more
degrading, college administrators are paid far more than professors. The presidents of large institutions, for
instance, routinely make at least five to ten times what I do. Although many are good at their jobs and
deserve to be adequately compensated—what about me?
It is an open secret at
mid-level universities that if faculty members wish to earn more, they must
switch to the administrative track. If
they do, they will immediately be rewarded with twenty, thirty and even fifty
thousand more.
Ordinary professors, on the
other hand, are constantly pressured to “publish or perish.” But if they do, their only recompense is to
avoid being dismissed. Where then is the
incentive to do one’s best?
Readers may be saying to
themselves; well, these folks made their bed: let them lie in it. Besides, they are crowd of left wing zealots
who are corrupting our children. If they
are suffering, their distress is richly deserved.
This, however, is
shortsighted. It is not for nothing that
we say: You get what you pay for. Consequently
if we pay full professors chickenfeed, we should not be surprised to find colleges
filled with chickens.
Reality has not yet caught
up with this bald fact. College teaching
is so attractive that we have maintained adequate recruitment into the faculty’s
lower ranks. Nonetheless, this cannot
continue. Word will get out that there
is no future in becoming a professor; hence the best and brightest will shy
away.
Most conservatives already
find superior respect and compensation beyond academe. Do we wish to continue this trend? If we do, the endpoint is predictable. We are in the process of creating hallowed
out universities. The halls of ivy
remain, but their intellectual eminence is swiftly becoming history.
With a college education
more necessary than ever to produce the self-motivated experts needed by a mass
techno-commercial society, this is a self-defeating policy. If we are no longer able to transmit wisdom
to the younger generation because those who possess it have gone elsewhere,
what is to become of us?
Still I am not going
anywhere. I really do love KSU. But where are the competent educators who
will replace me? Many, I am afraid, have
decided to pursue more lucrative careers outside higher education.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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