The Ivory Academic Tower?

There is some outrage going on right now in the academic community about a Florida professor who is making a little less than 100k/year and who has a contract which limits her teaching load to one class and is fighting the University about raising her teaching load due to budget cuts. Read the story here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/24/babb

Did you read the comments?

There seems to be a lot of outrage at the general academic community as being sheltered, under worked (or under-cooked as my spell check just tried to change that to) and overpaid. Many folks asked how many other academics have this admittedly cushy agreement with their colleges/universities... and many others from the academic world responded with outrage at the former comments saying this one example is not indicative of the entire academic community.

I would have to agree with the latter. None of the administrators who are friends or colleagues of mine are what I would even remotely call under worked. Most admissions directors I know put in at least 60 hours a week, often 7 days a week. Professors and instructors are at the college at all times of the day/night (especially those night classes... getting out at 9PM!) on top of doing some of their own work/research depending on their post at the college. And while many of these people do well (though not as well as the professor in the story), I would certainly say every single one of them works very hard for their paychecks. By mid quarter or semester many of these professors are so burned out from going full out for so many weeks they hardly know what day it is. (And no, it's not due to being an absent minded professor!)

Sometimes I wish I couldn't see both sides of the issues. While it certainly is nice to get on the high horse and demand that this professor pick up more since everyone else undoubtedly is as well it does not bode well for the University to break it's contract with her. That could set up some of the other academics who are less "bloated and lazy" (as one commenter described all academics) to have already heavy loads increased which would in turn reduce the service that is being provided to the students.

When I was working at the college I always considered myself lucky not to be one of the ones laid off, but yet every time there were lay offs I knew that another dollop of work would be headed my way since the person who previously did it was let go. (As with many other colleges, I imagine, this increase in work load was not accompanied by an increase in pay.) Eventually I knew I was not doing as good of a job with many of my demands as I would have liked to, but there simply were not enough hours in the day to cover all the various things I had picked up and do well at all of them. It became a matter of doing 6 things well or 15 things halfway. But that was just how it went.

So again, this situation I think requires a lot more thought... while certainly this professor may have a very comfortable situation, it may be hard for the University to only break contract with her and not lay the groundwork to do with with others which could turn into a scary situation. It also doesn't help the overall view of many people who are not in higher ed or involved with it in any way (i.e. no kids in college) that all of us higher ed academics/admin are "bloated and lazy".

All in all, not a good story to be breaking at this point in time. What do you think about this?