Meet a Member

Photo by Anna Neighbor

Anna Neighbor interviews Naomi Levine

When did you become a member and why?

I became a member in May. I believe in having a unionized work force. Also I feel a real sense of urgency to improve what is a pretty criminal employment situation for a highly educated and dedicated work force. It’s hard to stomach knowing that each of your students is paying thousands of dollars for your services and yet you are only making a fraction of what a single student pays to take your class.

When not juggling day jobs, where are we most likely to find you?

I am currently editing a documentary film about Armenia, and doing my best not to watch hours of singing competition auditions on youtube.

 If you had a personal mascot what would it be?

I think Rosie the Riveter is a pretty great mascot.  

 When you cook us all dinner, what will you prepare for us?

I will make Armenian food. It’s delicious, I have great family recipes, and it’s cheap to prepare.

Hunger Strike

post by Wende Marshall

I was recently invited to participate on an Anthropology Association of America panel about food and identity. I was slow in responding, and as I pondered the invitation over several days I realized that the idea of the panel was deeply disturbing to me. I realized that my experience as an adjunct struggling to survive without a full time permanent job had significantly altered the way that I think about the academy and about academic research and writing. There was a time when I might have jumped at the chance to be on the panel, when I would have been honored to have been asked to join colleagues working on issues similar to mine. But as I considered the invitation what I felt was a chilling sense of how inadequate the academic response has been to the crumbling structures of higher education and to the growing wealth and income gap.

Compensation in Higher Ed

Comix by Bugsy

 

Below are a number of sources for information regarding the salaries of faculty and administrators in higher ed:

The Administrators in Higher Education Salary Survey conducted by The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR).

According to the site, “Findings reflect the salaries of 54,853 job incumbents in public and private institutions nationwide. Salaries were reported by 1,247 institutions for 191 selected positions, mostly at the director level and above.” They report a range from a median salary of $42,400 for a Campus Greek Life Administrator to $539,537 for Chief Health Affairs Officer.

The High Cost of Higher Ed

Salon has published an article by Thomas Frank recounting just about every justification that administrations have used to explain the escalation of college costs. He states that tuition has increased 1200% since the 1980’s:

“Tuition has increased at a rate double that of medical care, usually considered the most expensive of human necessities. It has outstripped any reasonable expectation people might have had for investments over the period.” 

He questions the fingers that point to the cost of regulations, teachers and student needs.

“Nobody knows why tuition increases lagged behind consumer prices in the 1970s and jumped ahead in the 1980s,” according to an Associated Press summary. But in retrospect I think the answer is obvious. It happened then because these things are all related: deregulation, tax cuts, de-unionization and outrageous tuition inflation are all part of the same historical turn.”

It’s an article well worth reading.