You’ll remember that I posted recently about a semester-long experiment in reducing my working time as a tenured assistant professor who teaches a 4/4 and wants to raise a child alone. That experiment was sobering primarily because in the middle of it, I received news that a parent is terminally ill and that my older brother is being deployed “over there.” I don’t have children, but my brother does. And they’re in Boston with my wonderful sister-in-law. This will be his first deployment into this type of action, and one that comes at the conclusion of his 20-year career in the military as a Lt. Col. This brother has been the primary caretaker for the terminally-ill parent. As the second kid, I need to step up my contributions to the parents and also be prepared to visit the brother’s family in Boston while he’s gone.
Stressful.
Mostly because of the emotional toll, but also because of the financial requirements.
And, this began my next experiment: to live completely and solely off my salary and save responsibly according to a retirement plan and expectations for being present with the family.
I don’t have children — no expenses with that. I have a cat, and he’s content with vet visits just once per year (his only expense really).
I don’t own a home/condo — no expenses with that either. Rent for apartments even in the South Bay area (about 1-hour’s drive south of San Francisco) are expectantly ridiculous.
My car is paid off, thankfully, and running okay at this point but needs new tires and possibly work on the shocks.
I’m not decadent with my spending. My hobby, racing and training for triathlons, requires gear but like I did while in graduate school with rock climbing, I’m frugal: volunteering at races to receive discounted or free entry fees, buying used bike equipment (by far, the most expensive gear), borrowing gear when possible, sharing expenses to destination races with several other triathletes.
…and Starbucks. But, I’ve given up my Starbucks chai latte habit of late.
…and shopping at the Farmer’s Market. Now, that’s a big blow because I love to cook, and good ingredients are essential to good cooking.
After I completed the time experiment, I began taking a closer look at my paycheck: where was all the money leaking out each month?
- Parking: $20 ($240/yr) <–who makes you pay for your own parking? universities. Gah!
- Union dues (mandatory): $63 ($756/yr)
- HMO: $54 ($672/yr)
- 401K contribution (elective): $50 pre-tax ($600/yr)
- Flex admin: 0.17 – no idea what this is ($2.04/yr)
- Retirement contribution: $224 mandatory ($2688/yr)
My salary began October 2005 at $50,000. I negotiated up for that. As a consequence, I was told that another professor was given a raise to account for salary compression. After 2005, the union finally negotiated a new contract (after a few years of an expired contract) and got us all raises – yippee! By 2007 (or so), I jumped to making $60,000 and thought that I was in a good position to grow financially if they kept giving us cost-of-living raises. (You can take a look for yourself; since we’re state employees, our salaries are available at the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/)
Unfortunately, that’s not the way this all works. What I didn’t notice was the increased deductions being taken from my paycheck, e.g., that health care contribution went from $10 to $50 along with this contract. The budget crisis hit us hard and the governor took away the remaining contractual raises. Then the contract expired. Then the union turned to other things, such as fighting for student rights — a move that split the focus and eventually has alienated many tenure-line faculty. (Even the union thinks tenure-line faculty are privileged and has stopped fighting for us to earn a livable wage in California….sigh.)
I was now thrust into a higher tax bracket and saw only a minute increase in my monthly paycheck. Then, with only a month’s notice, the CSU decided to stave off a budget crisis by taking 10% of my salary for a year – furloughs. 10%! The most awful thing was that I was going through a divorce at the same time. No more 2-income household. No more saving for retirement. Student loans in deferral. Blergh. My financial cushion disappeared along with my marriage.
After living in NYC for 15 years and racking up some student debt, I needed to make some lifestyle changes on my single-person income. I’ve never quite given up the graduate student budget. But divorce and student loans — well, they’re both very expensive, especially while living in Silicon Valley where the average condo sells for $500,000.
After federal and state taxes, social security, and deductions, I now bring home ~$3100/month. My rent is $1300/month, which is fortunately low for this area because it’s not a luxury place and because I’ve been here for 8 years. Gas is ~$4/gallon. Public transportation is silly so driving is mandatory. (It takes an hour to go from my apartment to my university on public transportation– an hour, for 4 miles, an hour.) I spend money on the minimum: swimming pass, $10 dinners with friends, co-pay for doctor’s appts, food, electricity, Internet (why is this so expensive?), cell phone, etc.
I don’t have children. I don’t own a home.
My student loan was stupid. I wish someone had pulled me aside at one point to ask what the hell I was doing. There was no family money to pay for any of my education, so I worked and worked and worked. NYU was ridiculously expensive, but I left there for a better program with The Graduate Center at the City University of New York where I received funding in various forms to cover tuition and minimal living expenses. I still temped as a legal secretary during the summer and during those dissertation years.
My student loans right now are $348/month. I try to pay more than that because it’s going to take me forever to pay these off. FOR-EV-ER
Add to these, miscellaneous professional expenses:
- Zotero yearly storage: $100
- DropBox yearly storage: $100
- Remember the Milk yearly: $20
- MLA Membership: $120 (?)
- SHARP, STS, ALLC: upwards of $400 in some years when maintained
- Conference: limited to 1/yr = $1500
- Journals, books, and materials = $1000
I don’t have children. I don’t own a home.
Personal debt from the divorce and years of paying for my own professional development (conferences, etc., upwards of $25,000 over the last 8 years) has depleted whatever is left over in the paycheck and savings.
This year, a colleague graciously offered to fund my travel to the MLA. But, because everyone does the reimbursement thing that takes awhile, it was especially stressful to pay that $1500 (most up front) and then wait. So much gray hair sprouted from that waiting time that I decided I couldn’t do it. My university also has a reimbursement rule: I pay for airfare, hotel, conference fees, etc., and carry that expense for upwards of 3-4 months before getting reimbursed. It’s a hardship.
True, these expenses can be written off of your taxes, but realistically, I got back only 1/3 of those expenses paid. ONE-THIRD!!
In the early salad days, I traveled to conferences in England, The Netherlands, France and then did research at whatever library was there. I was working on a literary history that requires taking a look at materials that are distributed all over the world. The more materials reviewed, the deeper the story of this literary history. I won some internal grants during my first few years on the job — those paid for about 1/2 of the travel expenses. The rest was borne by my tech-industry husband. When both of those sources dried up, I had to fund those expensive trips to England myself. The final result is now a contract for that book and a revised manuscript due on August 1. So, it was worth it — yes, sincerely, that part was worth it. But, could I have done better at budgeting myself? It’s taken 8 years to get this book where I needed it. Could I have done it without those trips, I wonder.
Mind you, there is language written into my employment contract with SJSU stating that I will attend conferences and publish materials appropriate to my field. I work on a 10-month contract, but there is 1.0 part of my appointment that requires this type of travel and research….but, I’m expected (really) to do it during the summer when the University technically does not pay me. I felt an obligation to go to conferences and travel for research. And, no, these didn’t end up being vacations. They were fun, but my significant other never traveled with me. I was there to work.
I don’t have children. I don’t own a home.
This year, I started taking real vacations and also visiting family in Texas and Boston instead of conferencing or research traveling. It’s been good for my soul. But, these aren’t decadent vacations. I saved all of my workshop income from the last two years to buy a bike and then take my first real vacation since grad school — to Hawaii to race a half Ironman triathlon. And, it was cheap, totaling somewhere around $1500 for 5 days, including the race entry fee, airfare, condo, food, rental car, gifts. Yes, I traveled with several other triathletes, but that’s what made it fun. That’s the cost of a single conference.
In October, I will receive the mandatory 7.5% bump for being promoted to Associate. (Because of some departmental politics, I missed out on being promoted 2 years ago: that’s a whopping $9,000 of salary that’s been missed over the last 2 years. Add to that the $6,000 taken during the furlough year and you’ve got a real chunk of missing salary.)
If you take a look at the disparity among salaries in our department, it’s astounding, but I’m not sure why. Our current Dean (a very good egg), is investigating some of the inequities. Most of our department’s faculty make significantly less than the Business and Engineering faculty — significantly. Our long-time full professors make around $91,000. Our most recently promoted full professors make only $67,000. An untenured Business professor who came just 5-6 years ago started at ~$80,000. I try not to become frustrated by this….but it’s really difficult and has impacted my working relationships with these faculty in other disciplines who are blissfully unaware of this financial disparity, some of whom own houses and have children.
I won’t be able to attend the major conference in my field, the one that’s so very, very difficult to get into these days: The Digital Humanities Conference 2013 in Lincoln, Nebraska. With my new policy of not paying for work expenses, I can’t even afford the membership fees. And, at this point, I’m thinking, why should I sacrifice my personal finances to pay for a conference that should be paid for professionally? that will boost the reputation of my department and my university? How much more will I need to sacrifice?
I don’t have children. I don’t own a home.
I love my job. My students need me. I’ve gotten good in my teaching areas (for the most part). I’m still working on being a good writer (life-long endeavor). I’ve slowly figured out how to be a good colleague (and am trying to implement it). I have to be a good daughter and sister right now (with access to funds for last minute airfare across country). And, I’d like to stay sane. The stress level about finances is overwhelming at times. Maybe at the conclusion of the summer, I’ll have figured out how to become more financially stable. My only recourse to create some financial stability right now is to sell my rare book collection (and it might just be time for that to go to a library where it can be properly cared for and studied by other scholars). Still.
So, where does this leave me? Or, for that matter, you, the new recruit?
I’m not sure.
I don’t have children. I don’t own a home.
…but I’d like to.
triproftri 
I hope this somehow gets “Freshly Pressed.” It deserves, nay, requires a wider readership and audience. Thanks for writing this, and I am sorry to hear about the challenges with your family. My thoughts are with you.
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Would you be shocked to meet a tenured prof who makes less than $48k a year? Hello, my name is Alayne, and I am a tenured prof teaching a 4/4 load and supporting a family of 4 on $48k (-but more if I teach summer school, though only about $2k this year). It is the biggest single stressor in my life. The expectation that I will work unpaid over the summer on my professional development, that I will float the cost of travel, etc. to conferences until I get reimbursed. My student loans are $395/month until I am dead (I owe $77k). More than my 2007 minivan payment. Granted, I live in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin so the cost of living is less, but I don’t own a house either. My kids get clothes from Goodwill and hand-me-downs from friends and I am trying to be OK with that…couching it as part of our reduce, reuse, recycle policy…because I cannot afford to buy them new stuff. Even $20 for new shoes means that I go around with holey underwear. Whatever. I got into this because I wanted to teach. If I’d wanted to be rich, I’d have been an investment banker. But still. It would be nice to make a decent middle class living at teaching other people’s kids how to write and read critically. So I am totally there with you. So very there. And it makes me sad.
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Beautifully written! And strangely inspiring, given how much you have on your plate – I have a sneaking suspicion you and your sister-in-law will be an unstoppable team.
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I am finishing my PhD in history at one of the University of California grad programs. I feel the type of financial stress you discuss here (and I do have four kids). However, I also believe that we in the humanities can improve our lot in terms of both pay and in the number of tenure-track positions available by taking some positive action. We in the humanities have historically disdained to demonstrate what our disciplines have to offer, perhaps because for centuries we did not have to do so. Jeff Selingo wrote in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education that only 7% of undergrads select the humanities for their majors. That explains a lot about why you can’t get paid well for teaching and researching in your field, and I and many of my colleagues are finding a shrinking number of tenure-track positions open in mine. If we are to see the humanities survive (and our branch of the academic profession prosper), I think we will have to start developing an effective case for why what we have to offer is beneficial. If we fail to do so, then we are partly to blame for our own suffering.
After all, if we really are masters of language, rhetoric, logic, and evidence, we should have little difficulty in accomplishing the goal. That is, we should have no problem unless our critics have a point that we have become too inward-looking, and our research too impractical for anyone not planning a lifelong career in academia. Having served in the military and performed reasonably well as a military leader, and having played an important part in expanding a business last year (while I was working as a manager to gain some financial stability), I do not believe this to be the case. In fact, I think that we have more to offer than ever, because effective communication, insight into human nature and human reactions, and understanding of human language and culture all have proven to be invaluable to me in a number of applications. And with modern career tracks constantly becoming obsolete or drastically changing, the ability to have a flexible set of skills that can be applied in a number of fields is invaluable. But if we cannot make the case for ourselves, or do not even make the effort to do so, we have only ourselves to blame.
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Dr. Screech, thank you for your reply. But, I think it’s a little off the tracks. In general, the Humanities College at SJSU is not very well respected. Not because we haven’t proven time and again our value to a STEM-focused university, but because the administration consistently has followed the national movement towards vocational education rather than a well-rounded individual. Tech firms are begging for more liberal arts-educated engineers. They need problem solvers, not just worker bees.
And, I have to admit, I’m part of the hot/new Digital Humanities initiative (except I’ve been doing it for more than 10 years when it wasn’t cool). Even as I’m becoming in demand for my skills as a digital humanist and practitioner of digital pedagogy, I’m being exploited as someone who will work for less to design online courses.
I’ve been educating admins for years to no avail. It’s exhausting. And, by the way, they are very intelligent people! Why don’t they see, accept, and reward the Humanities faculty in the same way that they treasure the hoards of business majors? What good are these business majors doing in the world? (I’m being hyperbolic here.) How many articles does the NY Times, Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Ed need to write to prove that a degree or minor in the Humanities or liberal arts is fruitful?
Over the last year, I’ve abandoned this style of educating my colleagues and admins and have just simply gone and done my work in the classroom. My students are most important. They understand the value.
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I think you may have a point. I agree you have definitely done all that you can, and it may not be enough. I have to say that this does not leave me hopeful for the future. Perhaps collective action would be more effective. After all, AHA and MLA collect lots of money in dues from their members, and so does the union (I assume you pay AAUP or some other big union). Should’t they be using the resources we give them to increase our perceived value and help us improve our lot?
I appreciate your kind and detailed response by the way. You write clearly and beautifully, and seem to be doing all the right things – engaging with the public, taking good care of your students, and exploring new areas of pedagogy and knowledge dissemination (even before it is cool, which is awesome). It is very discouraging as someone who is still fighting to become what you already are to see that it will likely not be very financially rewarding, to say the very least (did I mention I have over $75K in debt from grad school, and four kids to support?) What is the point of expending all of that time and effort to develop this expertise if I could get paid much better (and without the debt) for my bachelor’s education and experience outside of grad school? If we can’t figure a way to boost our fortunes collectively, I fear we are creating an unsustainable trap for the next generation of scholars. I would seriously consider advising young people who have capability and talent to look elsewhere for career prospects if the financial burdens are so overwhelming and the debt so mountainous. And really, our collective organizations and leadership must address this if they expect our profession to survive and prosper. Even if I wind up having to stop pursuing the life of a professor due to financial constraints, it seems to me to be valuable and something worth the struggle it will take to preserve it for another generation.
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Hi Katherine, I saw your blog posed by a Facebook friend of mine. I enjoyed reading your piece, though I realize this was not written for enjoyment per se…But it’s interesting to hear how other academics are dealing with their lives and with the financial realities that we all face. I have to say, although my teaching load is not nearly as high as yours, the raising of kids (even with a spouse) takes up so much of my time and so much more of our money….The worst offender? Sports and activities…last week, I overheard some parents talking about how much it costs on average to have a school aged kid on a “competitive” hockey team…with all the equipment, team registration, travel to tournaments, hotels…about $10,000 a year…Can you believe that? And these were not professors talking….Just two parents with nothing more that a basic middle-class job and a bachelors degree…who seem to have an extra $10,000 laying around for their kid’s hockey dreams…
For me (and many of us)..it’s the student loan. Most of the faculty I know who are financially very well off are either in the business school or did not have to take out a loan. Plain and simple…the student loan creates a class division…my salary is good, but I have to keep paying back money that I borrowed (and deferred while I was a post doc…)…I guess I’ll break even if and when I can retire…I do not regret it, and despite some debt, I am pretty good financial shape… but I do wonder sometimes why I ever would have been so foolish as to borrow from my future self just to realize a dream of being a professor…
OK, back to work..it’s 10:20 here and I have a little work still to do on my summer class, which is they only way I can afford a little extra for a family vacation…
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The day after I completed my PhD in Politics I started a Pampered Chef business. I am often asked if I regret “not using” my degree. I do not. I love politics, and I’m a good instructor – but I want more from life than serfdom. I want to be with my kids, and I don’t want other people dictating how much money I can make or telling me how much I’m worth. As my husband finishes his PhD in Philosophy we have discussed jobs in academia but just don’t ever plan to pursue it for these very reasons. He can as much money teaching HIGH SCHOOL as new profs can. And the demands on time and personal expenses are so.much.less.
Good luck to you! (And prayers for your brother and his family.)
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Such an irony that higher education–the very enterprise that promises–in fact declares itself essential to–financial independence and even prosperity, should be the instrument –in many ways the sole instrument– of such fractured lives….. I agree that the student loan piece is the most loathsome of all–bad wages are bad, but to PAY with ten years of uncompensated labor (for doctoral level work) and with $100,000 of borrowed tuition and research money in order to “participate” as professors in this shell game/sham scam is the ultimate irony. This is a great piece,
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Thank you for sharing this. I know too well that financial stress, and how it’s more than just something on our minds but becomes a weight we carry everywhere. I’m 32. I will begin to pay my student loans this month, student loans I took out because I thought I needed the money for my professional development as a scholar and academic. A lot of the expenses had to do with conferences, sadly. You bring up an interesting and important question: how sustainable is this? Who will support our research? And why should the university gain when it doesn’t provide support?
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just a very small note re: student loans: unless the loans are very small, you *must* pay only the minimum, because there are programs for loan forgiveness and even cancellation for teachers and government employees, all of which depend only on having made on-time payments for a period of years, regardless of amount. for almost everyone, you will end up paying much less by pursuing forgiveness or cancellation than by attempting to pay off the loans yourself:
Public Service Loan Forgiveness:
http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/charts/public-service
Teacher Loan Forgiveness/Cancellation:
http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/charts/teacher
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Hi David — Thanks for your response, but believe me, I’ve already explored these options. The Feds don’t take into account cost of living in any area in formulating the minimum payment for these types of forgiveness loans. I would be required to pay upwards of $600-700/month for 10 years. With the cost of living in this area, that’s impossible to meet. Income Contingent plans also are fairly high. The “minimum” would put me at the poverty level without the ability to buy food.
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I love this. And I love your honesty. I am a tenure track professor in LA. I have a child (no spouse) and don’t own a home and I hear you.
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oh also the forgiveness programs are targeted toward ELEMENTARY school teachers. We are theoretically making a decent living.
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Then choose another profession, or move to a place that doesn’t have one of the highest costs of living in the country. I’m not being crass for the sake of being crass – in fact, I sympathize with your situation. But there are those who complain in blogs, and those who pursue the change they seek.
As a corporate professional, please tell me why I should pay more than $50k a year for a first year professor when there is an ample supply of newly minted PhD holders in this country from top tier schools who will work for less. Your problem isn’t that your underpaid, it’s that yours is a profession where supply grossly overcomes demand. In the business world we pay more for top talent because we see an ROI. I’ll pay $100k for a research manager if their findings and recommendations are going to save the company $100k + X per year. What do you produce? If academics said “high quality education that drives student loyalty and retention” I would cut you a check on the spot. But you don’t – you produce articles for journals absolutely nobody reads. You spend most of your time prepping for conferences that are the equivalent of Star Trek conventions – important only to those inside.
How about instead of telling us how awful your salary is, why not sell us on why you should earn more? What do you produce that is so unique and valuable that we should pay your more instead of responding to one of the thousands of resumes from those who would take your job for half the pay and not bat an eye at it?
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Hi Kenneth,
I think you have some very good points here, but I think coming from a corporate perspective there are some things that you might not understand about academia. I think that we do produce outcomes that are vital, like good communication skills, a sense of understanding of the Western traditions of literature and history and the values associated with those traditions, but more importantly flexibility, creativity, the ability to think through a problem, and how to effectively articulate what you have done to others – team members, supervisors, or board members (for example).
Flexibility and creativity in particular are cultural and educational characteristics which separate the United States from many of its rising economic rivals, especially in Asia, and they are also absolutely essential to entrepreneurial enterprises. There is a reason that the United States still leads the world in entrepreneurial start-ups, etc. And Silicon Valley, near San Jose State, is absolutely full of humanities majors – English, history, etc., as well as free thinkers.
The trouble is, creativity and flexibility, or an entrepreneurial spirit, is incredibly hard to measure, especially in dollar amounts, at least not until after an entrepreneurial enterprise has been started and become successful, which is a long and risky process in many cases. I think that the argument that the education which produces these qualities is a public good, like roads, bridges, electricity, internet access, or other things that lay the foundation for our national security and economic prosperity, is a very good one. The education Steve Jobs got (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA) was from a small liberal arts college, and could not be measured until after he got good results from Apple. Cutting that out of his life entirely because he could not precisely measure the future ROI would have been something of a mistake, since he relied on many intangibles from this education later on in his entrepreneurial career (although he did drop out to save tuition and never completed his degree, so there was definitely some calculation of ROI involved, I admit).
A college degree is not for everyone, nor is a humanities based education necessarily a road to a Steve Jobs-like success story. But without a large body of people with the training to think flexibly and creatively, and to communicate their vision effectively, the nation will never know. The military makes the public good argument and also justifies the costs associated with its expenditures (selling its results), and I think very effectively. But the military also pays all of the costs associated with training its personnel, including college for many of its officers. Not so in academia, where professors (and doctors and lawyers, for that matter) are often saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, coupled with modest pay. It is an unsustainable model, and reducing the quality of trained professors who cannot create the educated populace for the next generation of pioneers and entrepreneurs would result in a national loss, albeit a loss that might not be felt for awhile and might be hard to measure, but which would undermine the health of the nation’s ability to grow and adapt and stay strong in the face of international competition. In other words, an over reliance on dollar measurements and statistics at the cost of intangibles can ultimately be short-sighted and undermine the very institutions that are vital to business and the economy, all in the name of overzealous efficiency.
By the way, since the outcome measurement is tricky for professors in the humanities and social sciences (standardized testing does a poor job of measuring flexibility and creativity, and focusing on standardized test scores often leads to the suppression of those qualities, not their promotion), they tend to focus on how many ideas or how much research a professor produces in a given period of time. This includes certain article requirements published in academic journals – producing new research ideas for other professors who have the knowledge and training necessary to determine if they are good (or even fabricated, for that matter; those without PhDs actually would never know if we made things up, because they don’t have the knowledge). Additionally, professors present new research at conferences for the same reason. In other words, the way the academy tries to create performance measurement criteria produces the very things you criticize. An overabundance of articles no one else ever reads outside a handful of experts, and conferences that are only important to those who attend. After all, we have to meet our production quotas, even if the results have little impact outside the academy itself.
I think a couple of things are needed – one is that some outcomes cannot always be measured until long after the fact – like Steve Jobs and his partial education, for instance, but which are very necessary preconditions for entrepreneurial activities, research, and the like. And we in academia need to be willing to show what we produce not only to those within the profession, but those outside of it who support us with their children’s tuition, with donations, and with tax dollars (see my other post above). By the way, the prof who runs this blog did mention that she has done a lot to try to sell the value of humanities education (see her reply to my comments), so I do not believe she is merely complaining in a blog and not trying to bring about change – clearly she has been trying to do this, even if by her own admission those efforts did not seem to yield the results she desired.
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Hey Kenneth, as a non-academic it may be hard to appreciate how much a professor affects the lives of many, many students.
While I was still in academia I taught 1-2 courses per term, typically for a 300+ student audience. That made for about 1500 students per year, each of whom spent a significant amount of time in my class. Besides the usual class interaction, I would have per class about 15 outstanding students that I tried to mentor with student research, as well as 15 who were not doing well for various reasons (transfer students from vocational colleges, military members with other duties, etc.) that needed a lot of extra help. Doing this properly took literally all of my time, and paid me a salary that was barely enough to make it through the day.
I decided to leave, and I’m now working for a software company with a nice salary increase. While I’m happily employed and enjoying the benefits, I miss making a change for the better in so many people’s lives and I would have been content to teach for the rest of my life if only the salary was a little better. But not under the current conditions.
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“As a corporate professional….”
Enough said. The corporatization of higher education is at the heart of so many of the issues we’re discussing here: inadequate compensation (and don’t tell me that just because someone else is willing to take a low salary, that makes those wages suitable), skyrocketing tuition and the attendant student loans, and increasing disparity in wages between administrators and instructors.
Our increasing tendency to corporatize higher education will have serious consequences on both those young adults who are beginning their lives with loans and the young people who will forego higher education entirely. This will impact all of us.
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As an academic, I completely identify with your struggle. Indeed, my struggles inspire my research on gender and financial ruin in the 19th c. But, as someone who also does research on business, I’m not entirely thrown aback by Kenneth’s remarks. Creating well-rounded students was fine when public education was nearly free, but if we’re going to put our students into debt, we owe them more.
I think the task before us in the humanities is to create stronger connections between what we offer and what students can achieve in their professional lives. I’ve turned my focus toward innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism. I believe we need to become more savvy in the “business” of the humanities and start “packaging” and “selling” our gifts in ways that our students can more visibly profit from them. We simply cannot put our lower / middle-class students in debt to give them ideals hanging over from elite education.
I know that you have been fighting on behalf of the humanities quite valiantly. I believe we will start to see change soon, but for trailblazers like you, the change will not come soon enough.
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I think you may be onto something with this approach. I read the following with great interest:
“I’ve turned my focus toward innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism. I believe we need to become more savvy in the “business” of the humanities and start “packaging” and “selling” our gifts in ways that our students can more visibly profit from them.”
Have you thought of publishing articles on how we can go about doing these things more effectively? Perhaps in the Chronicle of Higher Education or a similar publication? I think that we could benefit from your insights? Perhaps you and Katherine can trailblaze in effective ways that the rest of us could start replicating.
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Ledann and Dr. Screech – I think you both make excellent points with respect to my comments, and I appreciate your willingness to consider them despite their critical perspective. But I did want to point that I do (sorta) have a higher ed background to pull from.
I was a PhD student in a top-5 program in my social science field for 2.5 years before leaving for a short stint in public school teaching, and then corporate market research. Seven years into my corporate career, I decided I wanted to pursue a PhD again – this time in Higher Education. I had taught as an adjunct for nearly the entire time I was in the corporate world, so I’ve regularly held a foot in both worlds.
To Screech’s point, I actually have submitted many pieces to the Chronicle dealing with this and similar subjects (yet to have them bite). My dissertation (in the proposal stage) deals with obstructionist attitudes towards framing customers as students among faculty (I specifically look at community college faculty). My literature review suggests something similar to what Dr. Screech says – that faculty perceive metrics for evaluating performance to be difficult to come by. The implication, I argue, is that this leads to an accountability bias – the type of bias that prohibits institutions from fully implementing the type of CRM based strategies for fostering student enrollment and retention in a more successful way.
There has been nothing more valuable to my return to academia than my time spent in the corporate world. Academics are too quick to dismiss business strategies as cold and heartless (only 65% of students would recommend their college – by B2C standards, that’s horrible). Business folks, on the other hand, are likely to quick to write-off the potential for academics (rather than MBAs) to build their business. There’s great opportunity for synergy – we’re just limited by our old guard attitudes.
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love this piece! thanks for posting! i’m in my second year on faculty: http://www.newfaculty.wordpress.com & can empathize & relate!
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Let’s see, I taught 4 sections about 80-90 students per semester for under $29K a year for a 9 month contract never making more than $35K annually even though I taught every summer and took on any other extra work during the year as I possibly could find related to my field for over a decade. I have an AA, BA, MA, and MLIS and I can tell you paying back my student loans was insanely expensive (but I did so, now I can proudly say that I own my degrees.) I have a wife and 2 kids that have sacrificed many vacations. I have had absolutely no possibility of tenure and at most an annual or 2 year contract. The financial reality of being a Lecturer is dismal on the best of days. Why do it for nearly a decade? It is one of the most gratifying jobs I have ever held. Working with, especially, college freshman and being able to provide them with one-on-one attention and watching them succeed is worth its weight in gold -at least to me. This isn’t an institutional problem. I know, personally, that my Dean and Chancellor honestly tries to do everything they can to make pay equity a topic of every conversation and have done an excellent job at making sure that those of us who truly believe in education has a chance to succeed personally and professionally. However, there comes a point that faced with the difficult decision of providing for your family or enjoying your job becomes the main topic at the kitchen table at the end of every month. So let’s get really real: The financial reality of being an educator is one that will always be inequitable considering the service we provide, but it is a service that we will provide given the fact that what we do is based on a pure sense of intrinsic value rather than extrinsic motivation.
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Love the post, love the discussion.
Just for the record Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester partly because his parents couldn’t afford it. So he did not get the full liberal arts education experience.
-A Reedie
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I can empathize, but these problems are not unique to academics. Loads of people now in their 20s and 30s are facing the possibility of never being able to afford a home and kids. They come from all sectors. Hell, loads of well-educated young people have been stuck in long-term unemployment altogether, wondering how this is possible after they got their higher education degrees.
Also, if you look at the salaries of UC and private sector tenured professors…many of them are on six figures. Like somebody else mentioned, oversupply is a huge part of it.
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Thank you for your response. However, I would like to see the stats for these Humanities professors making into 6 figures in the UC system. Most of the 6-figure salaries in any university go to STEM, not Humanities or liberal arts.
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Thank you for this post (and the discussion that followed). As you already know, many of us are in similar positions. And we don’t have children. While I am not good at including plugs, I simply cannot help myself in this case. I am in the middle of a project which seeks to get stories – just like these – to a wider audience. Here is a link for to the call for papers. https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/announcement/view/43
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I have one child, I own a home, and as the breadwinner in the family, I lost half of everything in my divorce (including my meager retirement savings). I am a tenured professor on a 10-month contract at a small liberal arts college, where I have taught for over 20 years. My take-home pay is $4,000 a month, my mortgage payment is $1400 a month, and… my daughter is about to head to college. Just room and board alone ($14,000 a year) will put me down below zero. So I am starting to sell everything I have: books, furniture, musical instruments, you name it. Instead of working on my life’s work, which I regard as the most important book I will ever write, I create erotic short fiction and other popular stuff to supplement my salary (frozen about six years ago). None of my respected, award-winning academic books have even paid back their advances.
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“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake”. Now, seriously, in Mexico I publish a lot and in mainstream media I don’t get anything at all. Nothing. You have that opportunity, Not in the academic world, obviously, or maybe you’ll be blooming with creative and economic satisfaction, but your response here is really incredible. I do not believe in the possibilities and wonders of the American system, by the way, I did not pay a penny for my education, but nevertheless I am thrilled with the possibilities that I, alone, by myself, could generate with only a few phone calls and emails to create a whole presentation with several renowned Mexican authors in NYC, presentation that became the opening of an international festival. I do feel for you, but I also feel that there are endless possibilities. You are a tenured professor, you do have the mind and the will to sell yourself. I really wish you the best and I want you to imagine life as we call it in other countries… The only thing you can’t control is your parent’s illness. If I can help you somehow, be sure that I will.
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I am an assistant professor at a Cal State and I’ll be going up for tenure in October. Furloughs came literally as we signed our documents for our new home. So I had to take a side job to make ends meet and I haven’t quit because I fear another financial crisis on the horizon. I have over $100,000 in loan debt enough to buy a lavish home west of the Mississippi. We own our townhouse but have no children. I couldn’t have bought this place without my husband’s job in corporate. Money is a constant stressor such that I had to push my tenure clock during furloughs because being able to make the mortgage payment was top priority. Our departmental O&E budget is routinely cut so I can only expect $600 for travel to conferences and mine are never local. I have 4 degrees but I’ve maxed out each credit card and often rely on payday loans through my credit union. I’m on a 10-month contract but I teach all year. I’m amazed that I got my 3 peer-reviewed articles published given the weight of all of this stress and anxiety. But I was so pissed to learn I worked my ass off for a 7.5% raise. Academia is WELFARE for the intellectually elite.
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Dear Prof. Harris,
I read your post quite by accident. And I’m now swimming between dread and relief. I am now a fulltime research assistant “paying my dues” to get to grad school (I didn’t actually need the extra experience–just wanted to be sure I wanted to do this for the rest of my life). The experience is phenomenal but there are times I wake up wondering what the heck I am doing. For the most part, I worry I will never get a proper job if and when I get my phd and I foresee never owning a home or having a family. Reading your post reassured me that I wasn’t all alone in my little quagmire, but it was also quite dreadful because it makes it even more real.
Thank you for sharing.
p.s., in my late 20s
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The piece mentioned that “…Our long-time full professors make around $91,000. Our most recently promoted full professors make only $67,000. An untenured Business professor who came just 5-6 years ago started at ~$80,000. I try not to become frustrated by this….but it’s really difficult” in the context of trying to figure out why the humanities professors do not have parity in salary with business professors.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I would guess that one reason the business professors can command more is because there is more market competition with the business professors. If they left academia and went into say, consulting or marketing or banking, they would easily command that much, if not even more.
I’m not saying it is fair, but I think that with disciplines that are more directly related to private enterprise ( many sciences, engineering, business), demand and market competition come into play.
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In reply to the commenter who wrote that no one reads those articles, then I guess I am no one. I am not the only no one who reads academic articles. I am not a professor. While academic conferences may seem insular and pointless to an outsider, I would gently challenge all of us to envision a world in which academics, throughout the ages, published nothing academic because academic journals didn’t exist and didn’t engage in freedom of assembly, speech, and press at conferences. That is a dystopia that I don’t want. I don’t want to be glib about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea) because I consider North Korea to be part of a whole Korea, but I don’t want to live in that society. Or a society run completely on capitalist principles in which everything is monetized. I could go on and on about the value of academic work to the civilization as a whole, but I’ll stop there. Thanks for this article–your openness about your finances is refreshing and important. I’m also a state employee and I am all for the transparency of salaries. I salute you for teaching young (and other aged) students to think critically and express themselves. The more people who can use words might mean that we, as a species, use fewer bombs.
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Beautiful. You said it much better than I could and did. We cannot rely solely on capitalist principles to shape higher education.
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I hate to rain on your parade, but you haven’t got a lot to be complaining about. Try getting by a professor off the tenure track with a family to support, especially when your wife is no help.
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I have a philosophy BA and a Finance MBA. Too me these degrees are like bread on the one hand and diamonds on the other. Studying Plato, Mills, Searle, and Scribner fed my soul, but studying discounted cash-flows allows me to have an upper middle class income. I don’t like the disparity in pay between humanities profs and STEM/Bus/Law, but professors in the later fields can get higher pay elsewhere with their skills. I worked in on a commodities trading floor with several former professors of math and physics. They earned 3x more trading than teaching.
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Thank you for this thoughtful and open article. There is too much about grad school and academia that is terribly opaque to students trying to decide whether to jump in or not.
I’m a Computer Science assistant professor at a regional public University, and I do make half again what my colleagues in the humanities do. I have to confess that as engineers, we feel our salaries are justified by supply and demand. In CS, there are far more jobs projected than students getting the degrees, so we get very good salaries in industry. I made more money in industry before getting my PhD and going into academia than I probably ever will here, and at least some of my students start out making more than I do now. But I love teaching and the freedom of research, so it was quite worth it for me. And lest I sound like I’m criticizing your frustration, I *totally* feel the same frustration when I look at my business professor friends who make half again what I do. Human nature at work.
Best to you and your family.
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I retired as a full prof. in a midwestern state–my end salary was about $66,000. We didn’t receive raises for that last 4 years of my teaching. I didn’t have the burden of student loans, and the cost of living is cheaper than in SF. My husband and I adopted a child a few years ago. He works very part time, and did most of the child care when she was younger since I had the job with insurance and pension possibility. We did fine on our income–we didn’t live luxuriously, but we were able to go out to eat, and go on reasonable vacations. We took advantage of our our university teach/study abroad program and went overseas several times, including one time to our daughter’s birth country, where we taught and were able to work in a heritage tour for her. Now that I’m retired, pension and Social Security bring in enough to cover our monthly expenses, along with my husband’s part time salary. I should mention, that we could have gotten along on my salary alone–the three of us, and we could get along on the income my pension/SSA bring in.
We live frugally. Unlike one of the commenters, I don’t regret shopping Goodwill and equivalents. Doing so takes a huge burden off our budget. 90% of my clothing comes from resale shops. I hate paying retail, and I pride myself on finding great clothes. For my daughter–that’s a different story. We buy retail judiciously for her, and still occasionally get her resale. We eat out less and less, but that’s because I’m retired now and can make more meals. Because of that, we’re eating much healthier, and for less money.
I hate to second guess the writer–she wrote her story well, and I feel for her. But there are some things she can do to lower her expenses. That salary could be adequate, though it might not seem so to her. I know it’s easier said than done, but perhaps moving closer to where she works, finding a roommate and ditching the car, or using it only very occasionally might be a start. Eating in, and buying food that isn’t processed would cut down on expenses.
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Thank you for the response. However, the point of the post is not about garnering sympathy or budgeting (all of the things you suggest for me personally, I already do except the roommate and ditching the car — that’s almost impossible to do in California and there’s no room in apt for a roommate). It’s about the fact that as a highly-educated and trained professional midway through my career and having reached what is touted as the golden apple (tenure), the university education system in the US doesn’t deem my experience and education valuable. If I’m teaching my students to pull themselves up out of poverty by getting an education, what kind of example am I setting that I myself am not able to make a better life with my tons of education?
Also please note that while it’s great that you were able to live on your salary and make it work, the cost of living in California is grossly disproportionate to the rest of the country. As you know, academic jobs don’t fall out of the sky, so moving some place more affordable isn’t easy.
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Thank you for your response. Aside from the budget advice (which is not really feasible in this situation), this post is really about the inequities in higher education and the continued devaluing of teaching in the Humanities. Did we really go to school to “make due?” Or are we an example to our students that getting an education is valuable to their lives?
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I suspect the difference in your economic trajectories may have something to do with the fact that tuition for higher education has risen 1,120% over the last 30 years. Many of us are forced to take out student loans to complete a graduate degree.
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Thanks for articulating the struggle I too face as a tenured faculty in the CSU system (CSU Pomona). The frustration and stress are so heavy for me too – I don’t own a house, have two children and a husband with a meager ($20K) income. I’m honestly considering leaving to teach high school or the private sector, where I’m likely to be better compensated with fewer requirements on my time and personal bank account to perform my job related duties and hopefully living in an area where cost of living is less. I am no longer surprised at the growing evidence for students questioning the value of an education given the realities you so well describe for educators, and this for just an undergraduate degree.
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I’m nearly 68 and teach at a state University. Full prof in a “fine arts” area, tenured for thirty years. Eight years ago I was talking with our university Chancellor and said, half in jest, that my goal by retirement was to make as much as a first-year IT faculty. Thinking I as serious, she replied “that won’t happen.” I remarked that maybe I should teach til 70 or more, to which she replied, “Don’t do that. Your department needs your salary.” PS — that Chancellor was removed from office for making false expense claims.
Is it not ironic, however, that just in the decade that women faculty are surging into the professoriat, and new women students surpass substantially the numbers of new men students, the profession of higher education faculty is steadily reduced to that of laborer? Maybe it’s not ironic. Maybe, given the police-state and some say fascist tendency in the US culture, it’s organic.
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Katherine, this is just so refreshing that I want to kiss you on the lips. It’s hard not to wonder whether this is the dumbest job ever.
Just to weigh in on one of your many points: shouldn’t academic organizations take into account that $70 annual dues for one person isn’t the same as $70 for another, depending on partner income, children, the cost of living, amount of debt, etc?
Not to mention how much the stress of worrying about money adds to the stress of conducting research, publishing, dealing with difficult colleagues and students, and teaching.
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Katherine,
I came across your post today when @noahpinion tweeted a link. I have a high level of respect for you sharing your story. As a financial planner, I think it is very valuable for people read about real cases of folks trying to balance and prioritize their financial and life goals.
I know your more immediate concerns and expenses are related to traveling to and caring for your terminally-ill parent. But, I did want to point out the potential tax benefits of having a child.
If you were to become the parent of a child, and assuming you would remain unmarried, two important income tax changes would occur. 1) a child would mean you have a dependent to claim and 2) your filing status would change from Single to “Head of Household”. Based on a very rough estimate, I figure these 2 changes would reduce your combined federal/state tax liability by about $4,000** per year. This would be money in your pocket.
The tax savings are not enormous, nor will they cover the cost of a child 100%, but in your situation I think the number is significant enough to know about when you are “doing the math” about becoming a parent or not.
Brent
**Note: I obviously don’t know your specific tax situation beyond what you have described in your blog post, nor am I deeply familiar with California income taxes. If you want a truly accurate estimate of the tax effects of having a child, I recommend consulting a local qualified tax advisor.
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Well-written and thought-provoking article.
Given that you have tenure, might it not make sense to seek a different position at a university with a lower cost of living? California is absolutely out-of-control with its tax rate, its cost of living, and the impossibility of finding a decent home. As someone who teaches at a small university in South Florida (after having taught in Boston), I’m doing quite well with my salary– no union dues, no state income tax, no excise tax, no car inspections, low electricity costs, etc. I know your article was designed to promote a healthy debate, but if I were you, I’d get the hell out of California as soon as humanly possible.
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Ah, that would be great, but most places now want the shiniest, newest graduates who don’t expect much and haven’t learned how to negotiate. For all of their cries about hiring faculty who understand their students, most English Departments want the most-published, ivy-league-ist candidate they can find. Unfortunate, but true. Teaching still doesn’t count for a whole lot in the job market.
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Why on earth would anyone knowingly go into 100k in student loan debt to be an academic, especially in the social sciences or humanities? We all knew the financial reality of professors in these areas. Even in the past when the job market was better, a starting salary for a professor of, say, sociology, is hardly enough to justify that sort of debt. I know there’s a lot of emphasis in academia put on the pedigree of one’s PhD institution, but, as one prof of mine once said, “there are the top 10 schools, and then there’s everyone else.” Why go to Princeton, rack up enormous debt, when you could go to State U., which has offered you an assistantship and tuition waiver? You’ll probably get just as good of an education, and probably be just as qualified for the same jobs. (And I admit to getting some satisfaction in seeing a snooty prof with a Harvard PhD stuck teaching a 4-5 at Bumblefuck state university in the middle of Kansas).
I teach in the social sciences at a big R1 state school in the South. I got my PhD from a big, R1 state school in the Midwest…for free. I turned down admission into grad programs like Duke, Berkeley, etc… to go to State b/c it offered the prospect of getting a PhD without doing into debt. And, because I worked and published my ass off in graduate school, I got a decent job. Most of my colleagues have PhDs from the Ivies, Duke and Berkeley, and thousands in student loan debt. Why? All this allows them to do is look down their nose at my State U. PhD. But at the end of the day, I work here too, make as much as they do, but don’t have the crippling student loan debt. This was about as easy a choice as I’ve ever made (follow the money), and I still got the education I needed to do what Iove. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I like to think that our choices are important, too.
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Thanks for your comment. I’m intrigued by your anecdote about judgment, but your comment also seems to be full of judgment about those who took on student loans to complete their degrees — and also some assumptions about those who attended ivy league institutions. While that might be true for some, it’s not for all.
Of note, I attended NYU for my Master’s but then moved to The Graduate Center, City University of New York to complete my Ph.D. CUNY is a publicly-funded institution in New York City and was very far away from being an ivy-league school. And while you were very lucky to have made some good choices, when I began graduate school, the prevailing attitude was to get a credit card to pay for the various conferences and job search expenses. This attitude didn’t carry over into The Graduate Center, but mysteriously, it carries over into my current position with a severely underfunded state institution and a college/department that doesn’t have the budget to provide more than $600 in conference travel in a good year (but still requires it of my professional endeavors).
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Yes, I’ve actually had administrators tell me to use my credit card to pay living expenses and to maintain memberships in professional organizations and to buy needed supplies for class. Administrators make more than 2x what I make. I’ve even been told by the Dean of our college, ‘Well, you didn’t get into this profession to make money.’ Then they get very defensive when I ask them how I’m ever supposed to pay back my credit card debt, let alone my student loans, when I’m not paid enough to meet basic living and professional expenses from month to month.
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Go to Asia, folks. I did, and haven’t had a moment of regrets. Still an Associate Prof. in a Humanities field, and far from a star, I’m bringing home about US$185,000 this year. And the best part of it is that whenever we do an international search, we get perhaps 1/6 as many applications as your standard job at Valdosta State will attract. So a Humanities PhD holder with a half-way interesting CV really does have a chance to earn real money. He/ she just doesn’t tend to apply for the job.
And yes, I know the obvious reply to my post: “But I don’t WANT to move to Asia.” Fair enough; and I don’t want to earn less than $150k per year even though my PhD is in a Humanities field. We all make our choices; them’s the breaks.
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The entire university system is a scam. It is founded on a myth, the myth of the well educated person. I get it, you create well rounded people who pay the pound of flesh and give the expected answers, but the whole thing is a fantasy. The multi-billion dollar industry you work for is purely designed for self perpetuation, it exploits your labor and name to get students to shell out more and more money every year for an indoctrination that translates neither to to money nor deep thought.
I know I speak heresy, but in my experience university professors are the least well rounded people I know, they are trapped in meaningless silos of disconnected information. Knowledge is interdisciplinary and involves real life experience.
You should quit and seek employment in an industry that does some thing useful for the world, maybe become a plumber, pays well and serves humanity in a way no university can, you can teach classes on your subject at a local community center for free.
I do not say this to be mean, it sounds like you love your work, but, the truth is you are working for an employer who for all intents and purposes is creating a generation of debt serfs, who like yourself have no way out.
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You and I are in the exact same boat at SJSU in the same College. This just made me sadder than usual to read my own life described like this. My level of resentment and frustration are so high right now that I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to take it. I have made the same adjustments you have (not paying for work expenses, etc.), and I have my student loans on reduced payment plan which in the long term is HORRIBLE for my finances, but I don’t have a choice. I have the added expense of commuting because, as a single gay guy, I simply cannot live in San Jose (and the rents are roughly comparable, although SF is getting extremely out of control as the tech hipsters gentrify at lightening pace). Anyway, just a brief commiseration from an unknown colleague.
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Thank you for this article. I’m a natural sciences assistant professor with four years of full time teaching experience, 15 publications and over 40 national conference presentations. I’m getting paid 58k/yr and I am having trouble paying for childcare and family’s health insurance. In my university in the business school assistant professors fresh out of graduate school getting paid 98k/yr. I don’t understand why business professors are getting very high salary compare to the other disciplines. I don’t think teaching business is difficult than teaching and doing research in natural sciences. This is really frustrating and I’m thinking of moving back to industry where I can earn over 100k per year.
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A few comments here:
(1) I left a tenure track position back in the late 90s for this very reason. At that point, I was doing consulting work (which my div I school did permit) and that doubled my salary. I know it’s extra work, but one of the benefits of being an “expert” is to charge higher rates when consulting. (2) I eventually did decide to join corporate america and now make near 10 times what I made as a professor. I’m not advocating this and I do feel that I’m lucky as to how my corporate / consulting career has taken off – – – I just wanted to share another path forward.
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