Today’s professors: Apathetic or dedicated?
January 5, 2010 by Michael ApichellaPosted in: In My Opinion, In this week's e-newsletter
Are today’s professors apathetic clock-watching lounge lizards? Or are they dedicated professionals who feel progressively undervalued with each passing year?
Take a look at what this week’s guest columnist – a professor – has to say.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of HigherEdMorning.com
Teachers change lives and careers, not just writing styles, says bestselling author and editor Janis Kaplan, recalling her professor at Yale, William Zinsser. “Theoretically, books can change lives. But practically, it’s great teachers who do.” Sadly each year many such teachers pack up their briefcases and reenter the job market as consultants, real estate brokers, or a hundred other non-academic professions.
Exactly why they leave is hard to tell. Some say money is the problem. Certainly a person seeking wealth should never become a teacher, for there are few bonuses and pay incentives for even the best in the field.
Speaking as a teacher of over 30 years, I feel that even if we increased professors’ salaries by 15%, it still wouldn’t pay those dedicated men and women what they deserve for educating the next generation of America’s doctors, lawyers, clergy and CEOs, for ours is the prime profession: We teach all the other professions. Without us, civilization would wither on the stem like an autumn rose.
Of course, anyone who’s studied in the United States will know only too well that higher education is rife with apathetic, clock-watching lounge lizards (as many students call their lazy professors on Web sites such as RateMyProfessor.com). We’ve all had one or two like this. They have little empathy for their students. They are capricious, undemanding, and rarely do more than a perfunctory job in the classroom. Some bitterly resent even having to give lectures at all, preferring to indulge in their pet projects. Going back to that 15% pay raise, clearly it would be a waste of other people’s hard-earned money to reward professors who don’t live up to their high calling.
Although the comparatively low salary is a possible reason why many capable teachers opt for new careers, it’s hardly the sole reason. Many simply long for some respect. Garrison Keillor recalls a time when teachers were honored members of the community, distinguished by their commitment to improving the minds of young men and women. In those days, a teacher might not have been liked, but he or she was always respected. These days, it seems to be just the opposite. Many teachers are liked, but few are respected, if not by their students, then certainly not by our culture.
Incredibly, we gladly pay a tall man clad in outsized undergarments an average of $5 million a year for tossing a ball through a hoop, with astronomical salaries at the pinnacle of the profession: Mike Bibby, Atlanta, $14.98 million; Andrei Kirilenko, Utah, $15.1 million; Shawn Marion, Miami, $17.81 million; and Stephen Marbury, N.Y. Knicks, $20.8 million. (The scale goes higher, but lest you feel that these salaries border on the obscene, in a fit of puritanical pique last July the National Basketball Association announced that the salary cap for the 2009-10 season will be $57.7 million). Compare these earnings to that of all postsecondary teachers which in 2006 were an average of $56,120 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. No doubt sports figures give audiences pleasure, but who contributes more to the welfare of society, athletes or teachers?
Perhaps it may be argued that until we reward the contributions made by educators through superior financial compensation, they will continue to be under appreciated and roundly disrespected. Meantime, whenever I meet a colleague planning to leave our profession, I recall Kaplan’s words, turning them over like spare change in my pocket, wondering how many teachers nationwide abscond from the classroom, leaving tomorrow’s citizens in the care of a demoralized corps of professionals who feel progressively undervalued with each passing year.
Michael Apichella holds a B.S. in Education, an M.A. in Communications, and a PhD in English. A professor with the University of Maryland University College, he began his career as a substitute school teacher and coached high school sports in Maryland. Apichella says he has no plans to leave teaching. Ever.
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January 6th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
When you say “Without us, civilization would wither on the stem like an autumn rose,” I become skeptical. Society is resilient. If teachers don’t teach, people would learn how to learn on their own. The apprenticeship model worked long before there was a formal organized, regimented, industrial education complex. Clearly, “because we don’t get paid what we are worth” is an argument to be made, but not without the “you get what you pay for caveat.” What the market will bear is how professional athlete salaries are always justified. But clearly, societal values are warped when entertainment is substantially and exponentially rewarded over education. Rather than wine about poor quality teaching (on the student/customer side), or poor salaries (on the faculty side), what we should focus on is how to remedy what’s truly wrong with the educational enterprise; that it’s not structured from the ground up to entice and spur learning more than it is to act as the gate keeping function by squashing enthusiasm for expeditionary and intrepid exploration of both the truth and development of new knowledge. Toward that end, perhaps the evolution of the internet will make all formal education obsolete, but until that day, we will need great teachers to spark enthusiasm for learning. The argument can be made that learning is best facilitated by great teaching. In the end, proof of learning is only obviated by the evidence of change and improvement. And in that respect, if there has been no change but negative change in how teachers are viewed and valued, might we not only have ourselves to blame?
January 6th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
NBA stars make much less than those at the pinnacle of Wall Street firms, and they held accountable for lousy stats.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Money, respect, and job security are huge issues for me. If I could find another job in the private sector (seemingly very tough to do in the San Francisco Bay Area), I would take it in a flash. You see, I’m an adjunct faculty member without a PhD (only two Masters) and there is no room for advancement, I can be let go at a moment’s notice (even though I’ve been doing this for 27 years), and I get no respect from students, administration, or the faculty who weren’t even born when I started.
Having said that, I am certainly not a clock-watcher and do the best I can to enlighten my students each semester.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
As an educator and adviser it is clear there is a huge difference at what level you are teaching. k-12 teachers seem to be so beated up, they have little time to be creative and everything is about the API scores. It is about the pay but it is also about respect most parents don’t teach their children to respect teachers. Stop talking and go stand by a play ground during recess and watch the interaction, go watch a friends kids in class through the window it will blow your mind. I have a number of friend teaching at different levels and I am amazed at some of the stories recently my friend took a phone from a girl in class. In response she told her parents he inappropriately touched her. The parents complained, the phone issue was overlooked and the principle just told him not to worry and blew it off. Really give me a break the students didn’t get in trouble the principle didn’t address the parents and my friend was accused and no one addressed that the student was using a phone in class or lied. This girl will be in college in a couple of years.
Over the last three years I have received a number of complaint by students, they have gone to my supervisor and complained. Apparently no one has ever told them no before and if they can’t go around you they complain about you. I have never seen so many students cry foul and it is just getting worse each year.
As far as higher education, if you don’t love to see the light come on when they get it, if you don’t love to believe you can or might make a difference, if you don’t have the time to talk with students, if you feel you don’t make enough then get out and do it now. And stop hiring TA’s and students who don’t want to teach, sorry folks if all you want to do is research then get out. That’s why it is called teaching.
If your desire is money and respect than you need to change careers. Every year I feel I make a difference and every year I know I have students who I have helped and those I have pissed off but I choose to focus on the few that have impacted my life.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:30 am
I hope that Windspike meant “whine” in stead of “wine” in his/her comments to this article. Perhaps this is a side effect of the “apprenticeship model” or “self-education”. There will always be excellent or poor examples of teachers as well as doctors and CEO’s. Still seems to me that there should be a better compensation model for the teaching profession that has a direct effect on the economic, wealth and social structure of a nation.
January 13th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
There is a bit of the chicken and the egg here. Respect is earned, not handed out free. As an adjunct of ten years, I came to college teaching from 30 years in the private sector, as administrative assistant and then journalist. I enjoy my students for the most part, even though there seems to be a culture of entitlement that is hard to deal with–student expectations that learning will be easy and simple. I would enjoy more pay, as I work an average 60 to 80 hours weekly, but there is also a black hole of unappreciation inside the university. In ten years my employer has never once provided an opportunity to meet the other adjuncts or to be recognized as part of the official university. This lack of support is demoralizing and discouraging, and I thought I had seen bad management in other arenas! Yet my self respect is intact; I do the best I can in difficult circumstances, and feel rewarded by students who recognize that. There is no simple remedy for such a complex combination of issues, beginning with the need for a more honest assessment of students and more support for vocational training. Some of my students have been railroaded into college when their real interests are elsewhere; some are playing the only game they know, the manipulation game. But none of them want to end their lives like washed-up pro athletes, broken has-beens whose “days of glory” were so short and overpaid. Who wants to be an old thug? I take issue with the comparison, since pro athletes are stars of the entertainment industry, which has always sold tickets, and teachers, stars of a different light, paid reluctantly because we don’t want to admit we need to learn again, in every generation, how to read and write and analyze. Sorry for the rambling. I just got out of five solid hours of class and I’m a little punchy.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I’m a professor at a community college. I was, however, an adjunct instructor for many years. Why do I teach? I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to make a difference in my students’ lives, and I’m not the only teacher who feels this way. Most of us are not angels (or devils), but, like most doctors, firemen, policemen, etc. in our country, we get up in the morning because at the end of the day, we know we receive far more than we give. Some will say this sounds corny, and I’m okay with that. In fact, I know of no better way to enter a classroom or a student’s inquiring mind.