Posted on 06/07/2011 6:24:03 AM PDT by reaganaut1
After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I “worked.” But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and—when it rains, it pours—another for unused sick leave. I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course, double the pay for adjuncts, which works out to over $200 an hour. Another going-away present was summer pay, one ninth of my salary, with no teaching obligation.
I haven’t done the math but I suspect that, given a normal life span, these benefits nearly doubled my salary. And in Illinois these benefits are constitutionally guaranteed, up there with freedom of religion and speech.
Why do I put “worked” in quotation marks? Because my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation: reading and writing about topics that interested me. Maybe this counts as work. But here I am today—like many of my retired colleagues—doing pretty much what I have done since the day I began graduate school, albeit with less intensity.
Before retiring, I carried a teaching load of two courses per semester: six hours of lecture a week. I usually scheduled classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays: The rest of the week was mine. Colleagues who pursued grants taught less, some rarely seeing a classroom. The gaps this left in the department’s course offerings were filled by adjuncts
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
For all intents and purposes, the Father of Sociology is Karl Marx.
A confession useful in changing the way leeches can vacation for a lifetime then retire without a monetary concern for the rest of their lives which are of value only to themselves.
Decimate all government.
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And your soft, satin pillow was carried, year after year on the backs of people, working productive jobs in the private sector you so despise, who don't enjoy the indulgent luxury of ahem....”self-cultivation”.
The Left is all about pathological narcissism. College professors have the art perfected.
At least he’s honest about all of it. More than I can say about some of the professors that live in my ‘hood. They think they’re entitled.
True. Trust me. I worked on a college campus in the college of liberal arts as secretary to an assistant dean and things haven't changed a bit since I worked there. They say teaching is a noble career - liberal arts was not noble (although the professors thought they were). Summers were spent in different parts of the world and preparing papers on your particular field i.e. language studies in Europe, digs in Egypt - all thanks to tuition. Maybe that wasn't so bad but considering the salaries those trips should have been on their own time.
People don’t change unless they have to.
This will continue until the end, at which time they will be faced with many new challenges.
Decimation is insufficient. That leaves 9 of 10. To grow vitally needed farms (private enterprise) in this overgrowth of weeds (government at federal, state, and local levels) we need to remove at least 5 of 6. Not just in taxspend, but also in lawregplex.
Try reading the article before criticizing the author. I know it's a violation of FR tradition, but try it anyway.
From his conclusion:
"What these professors and other government workers do not understand is that they are not demanding a share of the profits from the fat-cat bourgeoisie. They are squeezing taxpayers—for whom the professors purport to advocate—whose lives are in most cases far harsher than their own."
{Professors live like entitled gentry] all thanks to tuition.Tuition? That's just the cutsie cover term. The reality is that Professors and University staff live like a noble class because they have created and entrapped a serf and slave class. Who are those who labor most of their lifetime in servitude to support the Gentry of Academia? The students, shackled to nigh unpayable mountains of student loans. Those fewer and fewer who manage to pay off those loans in under 14 years are the serfs. Those shacked longer, including many whose paltry wages are then reduced further by garnishment--they are in all practical effect--slaves.
Work for or retire from a University and you are in hard truth a slave-owner!
This man’s position, and thousands like him across the country, could be replaced by a single DVD.
I’ll stop criticizing him when he returns the largesse he has accumulated over 34 years of the soft academic life. His future is secure, so now he wants to take the noble route? How admirable.
My critique reamins firmly in place.
I didn’t need to study the entire article to grasp the essentials.
Disdain for a “Freeper tradition”? Sounds like you don’t like or respect your fellow Freepers.
There are other Forums if you have a problem with that.
I feel your pain, but the good professor is, after retirement, engaging in a tongue-in-cheek illustration of basic Econometric Theory, for which the “Chicago School” is famous. Basically, it espouses that one should carefully look at the historic economic details before forming theories about the social group you are evaluating. As opposed to believing what a group says about itself, e.g. “It’s to promote healthy children and mothers.”
As you demonstrate, it’s a powerful way to change attitudes. The truth often is.
We may not need more sociology professors but we can always use more critical thinking... I’ve always wondered how politicians seem to enter a pauper and leave “public service” a prince.
It could, IF you could get credit for taking a course by DVD and taking proctored tests, and do so at a cost in line with the expense. However, at the University of Arizona, for example, distance learning costs the same as attending by class.
A 5 credit calculus class online cost, IIRC, roughly $3000. The local community college offers it in person for <$300.
But online, the class should not cost more than the community college. Tests are administered by someone else, graded by grad students, and any questions probably answered by grad students as well. Done as an online chat, one person should be able to answer questions for a class of 100, while the lectures themselves could be loaded on YouTube.
However, I’d bet you couldn’t get accreditation for classes taught online that way, because it would overthrow the University system.
While Professor DAVID RUBINSTEIN does a social good by reporting this grand theft of public wealth from the citizens, what is he himself doing, accepting the ill-gotten wealth that is ill-gotten because it enslaves others to continuing taking it, or is he honorably quitting the system, and refusing all this blood money?
If he is not then what is this confession but mocking braggadocio, the laughing scorn of a bold thief?
Hearty regards, Freeper!
Call a man living luxuriously on the broken backs of others in chains what he is!
taxspend, but also in lawregplex.
like that.
on line classes are high because like the rest of the higher ed system, it is subsidized by the government.
Here ya go...
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