The Coalition of the Swilling

Unfortunately the University of Florida put itself in a bad position because when it hired this professor, it provided her with a poorly written appointment letter which enshrined the ridiculously low course load as part of her job description. The letter should have stated the length of time that she was to be exempted from the terms of the university's collective bargain with faculty (the arrangement which governs teaching loads on unionized campuses). While I don't support her whining, from a procedural point of view she has a point. The university is breaking its contract with her. Whether or not it is a reasonable contract is another matter.

For someone getting paid $99,223 a year to teach TWO courses, and coordinate graduate studies, at a major school, there are no winners in this dispute. The prof looks like a lazy whiner, and the U of F looks like a bunch of chumps.

Which, in fact, they are.

LOL
An academic came to see me. He had one two hour lecture and one one hour tutorial for a course as his teaching load for the semester. He was telling me that he needed it changed as he wanted a tutor to take the tutorial because that workload was too much for him.

Let me see... thirteen weeks in a semester... three hours a week... I think he had that as his only teaching load, allow two hours a week consultation, examination/marking would be, depending on the number of students, maybe another three days (they get help if there's more students so as not to delay the upload of marks). Preparation would be another day, and another day to fart around in. Hmm. that's, um, about 110 hours in a semester, and he's paid about $70k (lecturer) for that. He also has to research and write, which can bring government money into the faculty.

Poor dear. Don't know how he manages with such a huge workload.

He'd started within the faculty the semester before and hadn't had any teaching at all, so I guess any work would have been an imposition.

I heard about the Houston "bailout" on the way to work this morning. It made my blood boil. Keep in mind, they want to bail out the same consumers who rang up plasma TVs on their FEMA cards. Grrrrr....
How fast can I ring up $3,000 on my credit card so I can cash in on this? And how soon can we vote out of office the idjits who came up with this insanity?

Ah, academic teaching loads. The way some schools - some profs - get us the lovely stereotype as parasites.

My "official" load is 12 hours. That is three or four courses per semester. Always three or four different courses, not just multiple sections of one. (one hour in lecture counts one hour load but two hours in lab count only one hour load, presumably because labs are 'easier.' Except when you're making do without a TA to help with prep, as I am many semesters).

This semester I'm teaching - I think I totaled it right - 14 hours. My usual 12, plus an hour "expected" overload, plus an hour of something else that came up and I wanted to do. (I think it's at 15 hours they have to start increasing pay. Or maybe it's 16.)

I also hold 10 hours of office hours per week. And I do my own grading (which is a big deal in my packed non-majors class), write and type my own tests, write my own lab exercises. On some campuses there are "graders" (which would be one luxury I'd like to have). I have about 100-110 students total, more some semesters.

I also provide academic counseling for 5-6 students, which is not a big deal, except for the week when it's time to enroll in classes or if they have a problem that needs dealing with.

And I do other on-campus stuff; I'm the departmental Library liaison, which means I have to ask people for book requests or beg people to let me know what journal subscriptions can be cut to save money.

Fortunately this year my committeework load is low but I've had years where it averaged a couple hours a week.

And we're expected to do research, but unless you have a grant, you're not paid - so it's "on your own time" (fortunately I can do a lot during my office hours because people rarely show up) and if you need supplies, you either buy them yourself or see how much you can possibly cadge from existing lab stuff.

So I get as irritated as other people at these "wah, they increased my load to THREE classes a year" prof, but for additional reasons - I feel I actually AM earning my salary and it makes me twitchy and angry when people excoriate all academics for laziness and "sucking at the public teat."

Oh, and I make under $50K a year. But I do get health coverage, which counts a lot for me.

No, wait, gotta correct - checked the old W-2. I make about $56K.

Still, it feels like less than that, once Uncle and the state take their bites.

I agree with you 100%, ricki. Most teachers work very hard given their compensation (having been married to one for nearly 20 years I am very familiar with what really goes on in both primary and college education) and it is the fatal combination of professorial arrogance and administrative stupidity in the case above that tars the profession as a whole.

I expected Ricki to come in and make all those good points. I was going to mention the research part as well. But still, ONE class?

Also I read so they can take on much more debt and buy houses as ... and buy hookers. So they're still pumping money into the economy either way. Guess that shows where my mind is. Or where I expect your mind to be. Or what I expect from Houston.