Pancakes with the Principal

Three Macdonough Students enjoyed Pancakes with the Principal at O'Rourke's Diner this morning.

Students can earn this privilege by showing SURFS behaviors at Macdonough School.

Department of Economics: Observations On The Lack Of Raises and Thinking Out Of The Box

As if you didn't know

We are in a prolonged period in which suppressing faculty wages is the preferred solution (after firing the staff) to "controlling" the costs of higher education.  Although paid better than many colleagues at state institutions and community colleges, for my two decades at Zenith, the faculty has come to the depressing conclusion at the end of each year that we are more or less at the bottom of our so-called "peer group" of liberal arts colleges.  One year, in an attempt to raise our position, our peer group was adjusted:  several larger research institutions were removed and they were replaced with smaller liberal arts colleges.  This helped our ranking for a bit, but of course, university rankings -- whether they are compiled by U.S. News and World Report or by the AAUP -- don't pay the mortgage.

At age 52, I make slightly more than 107K, 16K less than the median salary at my rank at Zenith and, adjusted for inflation and health insurance, less than I made three years ago.  The actual number of my salary tells you little, since I am quite sure that salaries vary wildly at Zenith and that I make more than some people who have worked there for longer (colleagues are invited to contribute their own salaries, anonymously if they wish, in the comments section.)  What I also know is that we don't get meaningful raises any more, and that it seems unlikely that the wage gap will be closed except through the retirement and departure of better paid colleagues.  Two years ago, Zenith finally locked on to what the public and state schools have known for a long time:  pay your faculty less, and there isn't a damned thing they can do about it.  Year before last, we received no raises; last year I was pretty much at the top of the chart at slightly less than 2%; and this year's overall pool will only be increased by 2%.  Simultaneously, insurance costs and co-pays have risen, and our health insurers are reimbursing less than they did, mostly by fu@king up our paperwork.  Conference stipends no longer come close to covering the costs of conferences (sometimes they cover the plane ticket and that's it.) The teeny raises also mean we are getting smaller institutional contributions than we expected to our retirement savings and -- for those of us in our fifties who are at what we were led to believe was to be our peak earning capacity -- beginning to address mid-life financial responsibilities for our families with a diminished ability to meet them.

The only way to make more money is to work more:  we now have multiple opportunities to teach more classes, and be paid adjunct wages to do so.  This is called, for those of you unfamiliar with labor history, "speed up."  The idea is this:  the university needs more revenue, so regular faculty teach an extra class in our extension program, for which everybody in the class has paid $2,130.  Regular Zenith students pay $2600 for summer courses, plus a housing charge for dorm space that would otherwise be vacant.  The faculty stipend for any of these courses is around 6K (which is about 1K more than an ABD adjunct wage at Zenith and 2K less than what grad students are paid for their own courses at Oligarch); there are 15-20 people in the class.  You do the math here:  are Zenith faculty being paid a fair wage for this work?  No.  They are being paid a market wage -- and, my guess is, twice what adjuncts at the local state schools are paid.  And yet, increasingly, faculty are getting squeezed into doing this as their salaries flat line.

Here's the bottom line:  I am not unsympathetic to the financial problems in higher education, or to the important restructuring that is long overdue at my own institution.  But I refuse to sell myself for less; I refuse to sell myself for less than I am worth; I refuse to contribute to the casualization of academic labor; and I refuse to do what is essentially volunteer work for my employer.

As an aside, this also leaves your Radical -- who is, in fact, a devoted teacher, in the curious and ironic position of being asked to reverse priorities that were just recently reversed.  Having had a huge career crisis resulting from the error of over-invested in the institution to the detriment of my scholarly pace; having reversed that formula following my big crisis and entered into one of the most productive scholarly periods of my life; having had my salary suppressed as an associate because I did not publish as others did while I was institution building; guess what?  Faculty are currently no longer being rewarded for their scholarship -- unless it can be leveraged into an outside offer.  Instead, the only way to get a decent "raise" is to increasingly take on work to the detriment of one's scholarship.  I have more or less missed the train of history on this one, which is a stunning discovery, to say the least.

And yet, it is also potentially liberating and -- not to be mysterious -- it is a problem I am working on, because if I can't control the financial priorities of the institution, I can control my own choices.  If I am no longer really working in hopes of improving my economic condition, what am I working for, and how should I imagine what "a better life" means? What would it mean to exercise more choice over the job I am underpaid for, and simply create priorities that are independent of -- or selectively dependent on -- the priorities of the institution?  To do less institutional work for my flat lined salary as compensation for not getting the raises I should be getting for my accelerated scholarly activity?  To do another kind of institutional work that is wholly and completely chosen, and which gives prestige to Zenith in exchange for Zenith giving me my freedom to define my own priorities?

Or even to imagine leaving academia entirely and becoming a writer, full-time?  Stay tuned.

Super Star Behavior!

Mrs. Walsh's class was amazingly hard working today!  The entire class was on green and higher on our classroom behavior chart! Great job!!!

A Pumpkin Graph

Today the kindergarten classes made a pumpkin graph about which pumpkin face was their favorite. Children brought home the choices to discuss as a family. Children got to pick from sad, funny, happy and scary. Both classes made a graph in the hallway. This was the first year that HAPPY was the most.

Pumpkin Patch

                                 

 The Kindergarten students got to go to Rose's Berry Farm today.  The children enjoyed a hay ride, pumpkin picking and a snack after.  Even the teacher's got into the fun. 

Saturday's Blogger Works Hard For A Living

Photo Credit

In other words, all you get from me today is updates:  revisions, editorial duties, leaf raking and other forms of activity that drive the meat world forward are calling.  And yes, I have gotten over Blogger eating my post yesterday, but I still have no idea why it happened:  anyone who does, do get in touch.

Latest News On The Witch's Wit Beer Label Controversy:  Julie Landweber of Montclair State, who originally alerted us to this issue, writes (via H-Women):  "The latest from the brouhaha over the Witches' Wit beer label is that Vince from Lost Abbey emailed me, telling me that they made an ignorant mistake, and are happy to correct it. They're thinking of having a contest with people submitting ideas for an alternative label, and are working to get in touch with the right folks in the pagan and/or feminist communities that could help them do just that. Everybody won! The greatest part about this is that there's a decent chance that with Halloween coming up, they and we can get local press interested in the controversy and give us an opportunity to educate the general public about the misogynistic nature of the European witch burnings."  In case you are having the same idea I am, although it is tempting to do so, it would also be mysogynistic to send in a picture of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O' Donnell.

But my other thought is that, as Landweber implies, this is a great outcome, in part because of the graciousness of the brewer in the face of a feminist critique.  Something offensive that draws polite criticism (and no, in the end it doesn't really matter whether it was 100,000 women or 40,000 women because it is the same crime and they didn't stop because it was sexist and wrong, but because it was politically destabilizing) should then be followed by an apology and a correction based on inclusive consultation.   How refreshing.

Check Out the new CLGBTH website:  All those letters stand for the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History, an American Historical Association affiliate.  Under the direction of Harvard University's Ian Lekus (known to his friends as the Great Leader), we have a gorgeous new virtual community.  Check it out.  Membership is still a smokin' hot deal, with a lifetime membership priced at $150.00 (about a tenth of what it costs to belong to the OAH for the rest of your life.  Full professors, pony up!

While We're On The Web:  The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians has completed a beautiful re-launch of its website. This was a priority for current president Kathleen Brown of the University of Pennsylvania (round of applause here), who wanted to make it a go-to site for everything women's history.  It's really set up to do that, and is the easiest to navigate and the most up-to-date we have yet had as an organization.  You know what else it makes it easy to do?  Join!  It will also make it easy for you to register for our triennial conference, to be held this summer at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, June 9-12.  Be there or be square, is my view.

And Since You Have Your Credit Card Out:  Consider subscribing to the Journal of Women's History, which has recently moved to SUNY-Binghamton, under the capable editorial leadership of Leigh Ann Wheeler and Jean Quataert.  Feeling pinched?  OK, well then, just reserve your copy of the upcoming winter issue so that you will be the first in your department to read the round table on feminist blogging featuring yours truly, Ann Little of Historiann and Colorado State University, Marilee Lindemann of Roxie's World and the University of Maryland (today you can follow the write-in gubernatorial campaign recently launched by one of its co-authors which may be a platform for the emergence of the grassroots Kibble Party), Rachel Leow of A Historian's Craft and Cambridge University, Jennifer Ho of the University of North Carolina, and May Friedman of York University.

WTF, Blogspot?

Just spent the morning working on a post about last night's transphobic Grey's Anatomy episode, and Blogspot -- which was treating me like a stranger when I tried to upload a picture -- ate the whole thing.

Thanks, Blogspot.