Hating Professors

Cleveland.com ran an article about UA considering eliminating Friday classes. Partly to save money and partly as part of a larger effort to create more flexible scheduling options for students who are more likely today to work (or seek experiential learning opportunities).

The idea may or may not work.

The comments following the article are another matter entirely.

The comments are cut and pasted here, in blue, and indented with speakers identified by capital letters.

A: I feel sorry for kids getting an economic degree from a university that can't even manage the outrageous tuition they fleece from kids and their parents.  At least they have that 55 million dollar football stadium, that nobody goes to because their football team sucks so badly.  Akron U sucks.

B: Cut football?

C: The football program is what brings in the money to fund many of these institutions.  They are no longer able to stand as universities because of salary/ pension bloat.  What they have become are actually football schools with a bunch of other faculty there to give non athletes something to do while they don't have their "We are No. 1" foam fingers waving at the stadium on game day. 

Tuition has risen sharply, but analysis after analysis repeatedly shows this is result of dramatic declines in state support, increases in high-paid administrators, and capital projects (usually driven by funding from the state capital) to build facilities often un-related to the academic mission.

Football programs are rarely revenue positive (other than places like Ohio State) and certainly not even close as places like UA.

D: There seems to be a lot of hatred towards college professors.  I don't think "professor" when I think of lucrative fields to go into.  I think "engineer" or "computer programmer" or "financial analyst" -- and who taught those people? Professors.  Ph.D. degrees don't come cheaply or easily. 

I bet if we knew the truth about where the bloat is in college spending, professor salaries would not be a big factor. 

Overall spending on faculty salaries at many colleges is probably down as they rely more on part-time adjunct faculty who get no benefits. The cost increase, like in medicine, is coming mainly from increased numbers of bureaucrats and administrators. 

E: Professors are a big part of the bloat, it comes in the form of pensions and healthcare.  Moreover, professors are the ones that created the adjunct faculty push. They realize that an individual department or college needs cheap educators because most of the funds are going towards extended retirements for faculty and staff. Moreover, the professors often remain teaching for decades even , while collecting pensions and still collect salary (albeit at 80% of original level). This alone, is a major reason that adjuncts get paid so little. 

F: Professors are paid substantially. Moreover, they secure for themselves massive benefits and they actually created the adjunct problem because of their massive salary and benefit packages.   As far as teaching, giving of themselves to create lucrative opportunities for students? Come on!, I am laughing my head off on that one. Most professors teach in disciplines that leave the students with ZERO skills for the modern workforce. Most of them do this because they live outside of the modern economy - the tenure system. The data on this is overwhelming, the majority of faculty actually ruin students lives because they are not honest with them at the outset about career options and future salaries.

Yes, Ph.D. degrees do come easily. There are far too many ,and the standards have dropped substantially. Your thinking about Ph.D. and its impressiveness is an ~40 years old idea. The modern Ph.D. is essentially worth just the sheet of paper its printed on. Many of these people have zero skills to operate anywhere except inside the safety of a tenured faculty job at some Podunk community college. 

Again, the data shows over and over that professor’s salaries do not account for most of the increasing costs to students and their families.

Professors do not ‘secure themselves massive benefits packages.’ Quite the contrary, these packages have been shrinking (and did not start any more massive than pensions provided to public and private sector workers at the time these were negotiated).

The ‘zero skills’ argument has consistently been shown to be wrong (with liberal arts and humanities majors experiencing among the highest lifetime increase in earnings among all majors). The data show that ‘facutly ruin student’s lifes’ is difficult to defend.

G: To save costs, how about cutting the salary of these bloated liberal college professors who only work a few months of the year.

H: There will be plenty of room for a four day week as  student enrollment continues to plummet .  Higher education is a competative business. U of A brain trusts can teach it but cannot practice it. Now they must suffer the consequences of overbuilding and overspending on useless commodities. Don't blame the educators blame the administrators and fools in Columbus. Try a four day class week. If it fails go back to five days. As always the students will be paying the financial consequences of bad management. 

 I: If they were honest about saving money, they would proceed with the following, in order:

1) cut admin staff

2) cut pensions given to lazy old professors who are usually teaching still anyways while collecting pension! It is why there are so many poor adjunct hired with no benefits, because seniority rules and allows pension benefits + 80% of original salary and more!

3) eliminate tenure. Sorry teaching for example environmental sciences should not be a life time position. Rotate in and out fresh new talent!!

4) stop the building and paving frenzy; they spent to much continuously building shiny new structures to impress students and parents.. 

J: Or, what if they stop paying incredible salaries to professors?  This is what's driving the cost of education through the roof.  Ohio U's average full time professor salary is nearly $114k!!  Not a bad gig for literally working 7 months of the year, huh??

K: I'm sorry, could not help but laugh reading your post. 
20 years experience in the Ivory Tower usually equals stale white toast.

Yes, professors "work" 12 months per year. But good luck actually seeing them at work.  

L: 12 months a year sitting on their azz while preaching out of a book.  

M: Excellence is not what you get with a college professor. These are some of the most inept people society produces.

Many of the same inaccurate urban legends being recycled here (adding liberal to bloated, while studies of actual faculty, that include business schools and engineering and other more conservative disciplines) from universities to community colleges show there is no liberal tilt.)

Most professors wish we earned ‘incredible salaries.’

‘Stale white toast’ is hard to respond to, but for those who work in education it is clear and unanimously agreed on (regardless of political persuasion) that experience matters.

Studies repeatedly show that the average professor works more than 60 hours per week.

‘Some of the most inept’ sounds more like a former student who earned a bad grade and has still not learned to take constructive criticism.

N: Another move to string out graduation and make more money on fees.  Maybe they should eliminate morning classes while they're at it, and classes on days beginning with a "T".

O: Education happens in life whether or not you have a bozo professor lecturing you or not.

I love the cancel classes on days beginning with T idea. Funny.

Education does happen outside the classroom, and it is true that some in the academy need to do more to recognize this and integrate this insight into how they teach, but if the suggestion here is that life experience can replace the classroom—no evidence that this is anything other than a crazy idea. Hard to imagine anyone learning their times tables or how to read and write in the process of weeding or operating a factory line.

These comments are nearly all inaccurate. Some appear to be more about being mean than about serious argument.

More importantly, however, these reflect the deep contempt in which some (many?) hold academics and educators, perhaps expertise and a life of the mind in general.

As educators we need to develop a sustained strategy for reversing this trend.