, 2 min read
Are teachers overpaid?
Critical Mass started an interesting debate: are teachers underpaid? The argument why they should be paid more seems a bit on the weak side: they have great job security, relatively good benefits like a summer off, and comparatively decent pay. My mother works 30 something hours a week, she has her summer off, and she makes more than I do as a university professor. Oh. And she lives in a less expensive area, has far less education, but admittedly more work experience. The debate was taken on by O’DonnellWeb who takes the whole issue apart by bringing it back to supply and demand. Getting a university degree in education is relatively easy (he claims), there are plenty of people qualified to teach, and frankly it isn’t such a difficult job: intellectual rigor is not a requirement (he says).
Here’s what I think. The market is a powerful force to set salaries, but only when people can be trusted to do what’s best for them. People will often aim for job security at all cost. That’s when the system fall apart. Once you have tenure, the school could freeze your salary and many people would never leave… sad… and I’ve recently heard someone say “if I don’t get tenure, where else could I get a job?” These comments are interesting to me. Where else could you get a job? What about the average joe who works at company X and company X fires him… is his life over? Not even close!
People in academia are very insecure. My theory is that most of them have been sheltered for so long, that they have no idea how the world works. Think of yourself as wolf. You’ve spotted a nice forest where there is plenty to eat… then, one day, you have hard time finding new prey, or maybe there are hunters nearby shooting at you, or maybe they are cutting down the forest. Don’t stand there! Move, go! Any wolf would know this. “But where will I find a new forest? What if there aren’t any?” Well, you’ll die then. But you know what? Failure is ok. Getting stuck in a bad spot is ok. As long as you still feel free to go whenever it is best for you. But my skills are not easily transferable? Ah. See, you should have thought of that earlier on: pick new skills carefully, make sure they can serve in many settings otherwise, be willing to pay a price later on.
I think nobody should go straight from school to a tenure-track position. It is a bad choice: many people will then tend to overvalue their tenure which will be detremental to them if they have tenure at a bad place.
Update: I think we could make the world a better place by requiring teachers and professors to have real work experience (outside schools). Right now, we discourage students to get work experience outside universities: I think we should require it. When I was a professor at Acadia, they wanted to make industry experience a requirement. It was a brilliant move and I hope they did it. Everyone would be better off.