I wept several times while reading A POEM ABOUT YOUR UNIVERSITY’S ABSOLUTE AND UNWAVERING APPRECIATION OF ITS FACULTY IN SPITE OF SAID FACULTY’S CRAP SALARIES. I might have howled a few times, too, but I blacked out at the end and the last hour has been a blur.
Maybe we need a law against too much raw honesty in our poetry. It’s dangerous.
“500 Server Error
Sorry. An error has happened.”
That’s the poem?
Try again. McSweeney’s seems to be a bit glitchy today.
Wrong specialty. Even the business schools take a back seat to these people.
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/09/11/highest-paid-employee-in-each-state
It’s a crappy poem, in great part because it’s chopped prose, and accurate about the obtuse, overpaid, bureaucratic machines that are most higher-ed administrations; they work for themselves. We all know that.
Why I quit teaching, but not writing.
Can’t say I’ve ever felt especially underpaid as an academic.
chris61, out of curiosity,
1) How much are you paid (roughly)?
2) What degree is required for your job/career?
3) how long have you been doing it?
“…your retirement plans … along the lines of
Falling into your grave while reading a paper
About Ophelia and madness….”
Mine include falling face down into my keyboard.
And yet, US faculty would never *dream* of unionizing.
Oh, we unionize. I am in a union, and it is the only thing that has kept us afloat. It helps with salary as it can (which is not much, but something), but the health care benefits it negotiates are a basket of diamonds for which I am continually grateful.
Except that the Janus case is about to blow all of that apart and bankrupt unions across the country as well as drastically lower their negotiating power. So there’s that.
A few years ago my institution decided to reward employees who had put in 25 years of service. We were told we would get a nice certificate in a shoddy frame, plus a cheap pen (OK, they may not have used those exact adjectives). In a somewhat stroppy mood, I emailed the office with something to the effect of ‘Thanks for the recognition, but a pay rise would be nice’. We were subsequently informed that we would also get a bonus in next month’s pay packet, which turned out to be a massive £35 after tax. Still, better than nothing…
@4: Those rates are lousy compared with most professionals of comparable education and experience. In the Ancient Times what made up for this was respect and freedom, both of which are now in short supply. (And I say that as one who jumped out of academia long, long ago in search of more freedom and even less money.)
@5: Nonsense. It’s a great poem, for its genre.