Thursday, March 22, 2007

Higher ed news, continued

Just got this link from a reader, apparently a Cal State grad, with the comment "Go Cal State (faculty)!" This reader is encouraging a continuation of the recent threat on higher ed, obviously. Here's the punchline:
Professors are angry about recent executive pay hikes and have said instructor compensation is too small.
People in Madison should be looking at executive compensation, even though it's hard to be sure that we're seeing all the compensation the fat cats actually get.

But they should consider another issue: One of the real problems at the level of a department or institute on campus is support staff. There are far too few, and they are overworked and underpaid, and their numbers have been cut. Compare that to deans' offices and the central administration, and you'll see that while our staffs are being starved, these folks are promoting people and giving them massive raises. There are pretty low-level paper pushers in some colleges earning very close to six digits, far more than what a fair number of internationally known full professors earn.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely right about the staff.

Back to your Comp Lit comment of many days ago, one way of dealing with small depts is to consolidate staff. It is hard to see that such a move wouldn't have an unintended consequence of trimming staff even more (increasing the faculty to staff ratio).

Mr. Verb said...

"Unintended"?