Michigan university professors have their wages cut so much they are now eligible for food stamps

[snagglepuss]

They are synonymous with poverty and desperation, but draconian cuts to education spending in one U.S. state has meant respected university professors are now becoming eligible for food stamps.

snip

In state capital Detroit Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb laid off every single public school teacher. while his counterpart in the town of Benton Harbor has stripped elected officials of vast majority of their powers

Now a full time professor at Central Michigan University has revealed his salary is now so low he has become eligible for food stamps.

Patrick McGinnity has taught English at CMU for three years as a full-time faculty member. Yet his $24,600 a year is insufficient to provide for his family of four, so he relies on government assistance, including WIC and a Bridge Card, to put food on the table.

snip



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378034/Michigan-university-professors-wages-cut-eligible-food-stamps.html#ixzz1Jv8up6UP

[Vincardog]

1. View the rePIGlikin vision of our future

[GKirk]

2. I'm having a little trouble understanding

this story. I'm from Michigan and I haven't heard of any cuts to university professor's wages here being in effect(the story only talks about proposed cuts). And while I don't know what professors at CMU are paid it's hard for me to believe it is that low.

Then the photo shows the campus of the University of Michigan but the story only speaks about Central Michigan University.

Doing some research on the net I find:
http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Central-Michigan-University-Assistant-Professor-Mount-Pleasant-Salaries-EJI_IE29628.0,27_KO28,47_IL.48,62_IM587.htm?filter.experienceLevel=LESS_THEN_ONE

which shows an average salary at CMU of $56,000 with a range of $42,000 to $79,000

[snagglepuss]

5. Perhaps that says something about Michigan news reporting. The story

which names the professors appears credible. :shrug:

[yawnmaster]

6. Is there a Michigan report? I only see a UK report from the dailymail. eom

[snagglepuss]

8. Google is your friend. Why would the DM fabricate this story?

[GKirk]

10. I don't know the source

I'll have to take your word for it. I found two sources with the same basic info.

Patrick McGinnity has taught English at CMU for three years as a full-time faculty member. Yet his $24,600 a year is insufficient to provide for his family of four, so he relies on government assistance, including WIC and a Bridge Card, to put food on the table.


Patrick McGinnity has an MFA and he has taught English at CMU for three years as a full-time faculty member. Patrick’s $24,600 yearly salary is insufficient to support his family of four, so they rely on government assistance, including WIC and a Bridge Card, to keep food on the table.

[sudopod]

13. Business and law professors tend to skew the average a bit. nt

[Piltdown13]

15. Yeah, they do.

And the range quoted sounds like it could be just tenure-track appointments -- which the guy mentioned in the snippet probably doesn't have, given that he's got an MFA rather than PhD.

[a la izquierda]

34. I was just about to post this...

I have a professorship appointment beginning this fall, and I'm making a heck of a lot more than that. Thank god. I owe the government.

[readmoreoften]

25. That's probably tenured and tenure-track faculty. Not lecturers and adjuncts.

Non-tenured faculty make significantly less money. $24K is about par for the course.

[readmoreoften]

28. You probably haven't heard about it because it's not a drastic "cut" its just typical wages for

non-tenured labor. This economy is producing the destruction of tenure lines, so most new jobs are full-time non-tenured or worse, which pays anywhere from a little over half to in some cases one-quarter of what the same person makes with tenure.

[pnwmom]

3. Wow. That's really atrocious. n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. If I was not retired from another job with a pension, living on academic wages would be quite hard

[jody]

7. Perhaps the English prof is only worth $24K per year. There are probably thousands of English PhDs

looking for a job, any job at all.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tkmorris]

24. That is one of the most offensive comments I have heard

I don't care how many people have degrees in the field, no one teaching our young men and women deserves to be paid so little. What an appalling thing to say.

[jody]

31. Still demand sets the price for products and services. There are thousands of PhDs in English and

other fields who cannot find a job must less a position.

Moreover there are numerous ways for people to get cheap doctorates from diploma mills.

I know deans and former deans who will not consider an applicant with degrees from diploma mills.

[readmoreoften]

29. God forbid people teach critical thinking or writing skills.

Because college students produce dazzling prose that is oh-so logically consistent.

[jody]

32. Agree 100% but IMO the problem begins in K-12 where many graduates are functionally illiterate. nt

[bbinacan]

9. I must call BS on this one. n/t

[Piltdown13]

11. Shocking but not surprising...

I have no trouble believing this...notice it says "full-time," not "tenure-track." The terms for some non-tenure track, full-time appointments can be pretty brutal, but below $28K for full time work is...wow.

[marions ghost]

16. agree

this is believable considering the non-tenure track slave wages I have seen too.

[Curmudgeoness]

12. Mr. McGinnity, please post your income tax return. I find this

hard to believe. I have no doubt he may be paid shitty for someone with a master's degree, but $24,600 is a little much to believe.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Press release from the American Federation of Teachers, March 30:

The presidents of AFT Michigan local unions at Michigan State University, Wayne State University, Western Michigan University and the University of Michigan testified before the House and Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committees. Dozens of full and part-time faculty members from universities across the state attended the hearing and met with individual legislators to reinforce the fact that Michigan's universities have been cut to the bone, and that further cuts would increase the cost of education.
...
"A colleague of mine at Central Michigan University, Patrick McGinnity, teaches English full-time but earns less than $25,000 a year and supports his family of four only by using Bridge Card benefits to feed his children," said Bonnie Halloran, president of the University of Michigan Lecturers Employee Organization. "Is it any wonder that people with advanced degrees migrate to other employment or other states?"

http://aftmichigan.org/aboutus/newshigheredbudgetcuts.html

More of the testimony here: http://www.leounion.org/news/370-halloran-testifies-against-proposed-cuts-to-higher-ed-appropriations

[GKirk]

18. Looks like it must be for real...

...I'm just curious now if he his income has dropped since he started 3 years ago.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. It needn't have - from the 2nd link:

At this point, I’d like to go off script for a moment. Yesterday, Representative Harvey Santana spoke with my Anthropology students. After class, he and I were talking about the proposed cuts to higher education, and we started talking about faculty salaries. When I told him that my full-time salary, after teaching 12 years at U of M Dearborn, is currently $32,000 he was shocked, but then I told him that 7 years ago, typical of many instructors on the Dearborn campus, was only $19,700. At first he was speechless, but then he told me I should definitely share my personal story with the members of this committee because he thought that most Legislators were not aware of the full salary picture ate our state universities.

[kiva]

20. However, not the whole story.

According to the Central Michigan University website: http://www.cmich.edu/chsbs/x23588.xml McGinnity is an adjunct professor. Adjuncts do not make anything comparable to tenure and tenure track faculty at any college or university - not fair, since adjuncts are often the backbone of departments that make up most general education requirements, but a reality.

The college I teach at pays adjuncts $2400 for a three-credit class; the class load for full time faculty is 5/5, so 10 classes per year, meaning that if an adjunct taught the same class load (which almost never happens), then their salary would be about the same as McGinnity's in Michigan.

The reality is that some states are requiring their faculty to take cuts - I'm taking a minimum of a 5% cut this year - but the figures from this article are trying to sell apples as oranges.

[readmoreoften]

30. I disagree with your assessment.

The use of adjunct labor is a workers' rights issue at universities and its becoming a major crisis. More telling, it's an invention of the US system. Adjunct labor was originally justified for bringing "adjunct" courses (non-central) to the curriculum. In other words, esoteric courses. Now, as you say, adjuncts are CENTRAL to the university and cover most of the coursework. At three of the universities where I've worked or taught, adjuncts even teach graduate courses (and not all three are "coastal" schools). Many people graduating with very impressive credentials (Princeton and Berkeley among people I know) are not being offered tenure-track positions. The "value" line between tenured and non-tenured has far more to do with when you were hired than your value as a teacher or researcher these days. In other words: there is no reason that adjuncts and full-time lecturers should make less than tenured and t-track faculty when their credentials and publications are identical.

Point #2: I'm sorry that your course load is 5/5. That is really too much for anyone, tenured or otherwise. I hope your student-teacher ratio is low. $2400 is abysmal per course.

[Liberal_in_LA]

21. 24K for a professor? O.M.G!!!!!!!

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Ah back to the 1930s I see

serious...

[Generic Other]

23. non-tenure, adjunct

considered temps. where benefits and salaries are concerned. Totally exploited academic migrant workers picking up classes at multiple schools.

[readmoreoften]

26. Even full-time non-tenured don't earn enough to make a living.

[Viking12]

35. Bingo!

The tenured professor is becoming a relic of the past. At my institution we have about 40% fewer tenured & tenure track faculty than we did 15 years ago. At the same time our enrollment has increase by roughly 25%. As tenured professors retire, they are being replaced by non-tenure track, low paid instructors. In many departments, non-tenure track instructional staff outnumber the tenure track.

[readmoreoften]

27. In some departments *cough, cough* full-time non-tenured makes 31-36K and

most (70%) of the full-timers are being reduced permanent part-time from 12K-15K a year without benefits. This non-tenure group is a little over 50% of the workforce and growing.

[jody]

33. I know one college that used 90+% adjuncts for its courses. The so-called chancellor ruthlessly

dominated the few tenured profs who were glad to have a job.

The students were able to get a marginal education if they applied themselves, no thanks to the school.

[progressoid]

36. And yet their football coach makes makes over a quarter million dollars a year (plus bonuses)

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/mac/2008-01-03-cmich-jones_N.htm