Dear All,
While I have had several interesting private replies to my earlier post, most contain personal information that makes it inappropriate to publish them without extensive work. These questions are so interesting that I may eventually try to gather an article together. No promises — the world situation is genuinely confusing, and I’m just trying to make sense of it for myself.
One reply came in that involves broader issues. With permission from Terry Love, I post his notes.
“Another side to the issue described is that vice chancellors around the world have developed strategies to stabilise universities against the vagaries of international student flows. Student tuition fees are the main source of university income outside bequests. This has three consequences. 1) Universities now invest predominantly in buildings and physical infrastructure — not IT. These are 'hard’ investments. They are hard to change and reverse and they make universities physically attractive to international students. 2) Universities make academic personnel a 'soft' cost that can be cut back or expanded quickly. They can also subject academic staff to emotional pressure to force lower costs and raise cost-effectiveness. 3) Universities seek to ensure sufficient spare financial resources after teaching costs to provide unusually high salaries and bonuses for vice chancellors and senior administrators.
"In Australia, the government made a special informal agreement with vice chancellors to stop them paying themselves and their immediate colleagues ever more incredible salaries, awards and bonuses. Currently, I believe the limiting agreement is for vice chancellors to have at the moment towards $2 million a year.
https://theconversation.com/how-australian-vice-chancellors-pay-came-to-average-1-million-and-why-its-a-problem-150829
https://www.smh.com.au/education/university-vice-chancellor-salaries-soaring-past-1-5-million-and-set-to-keep-going-20190620-p51zq3.html
“One simple explanation of the pressure on academics is the process of minimising academic salary costs in order to pay very high salaries to vice chancellors and a relatively large number of senior administrators.
“It is interesting that a typical vice chancellor’s salary used to be less than 3 times that of a level B lecturer salary. It is now around twenty times the level of a B lecturer salary.
“One consequence of this is that each current level B lecturer must do the work previously done by six level B lecturers to create the spare cash flow that universities need to pay for a vice chancellor's salary…”
This is something to think about. It used to be that people chose academic life because they were curious about the problems and challenges of the fields and disciplines they love. While we did not earn what people might earn in well paid professions, the salaries weren’t bad and the work was wonderful. What smart people gave up in exchange for relatively low salaries compared to the money equally smart people earned in other professions was a reasonable guarantee of lifetime employment in the field. This is no longer the case.
The new standard is part-time work and precarious employment. The number of permanent positions and tenure track jobs is shrinking. People who get them lack the time to do the work required to move up to full professor. Some of the comments I have been getting show that even full professors have increasingly difficult jobs. Rather than accept these conditions for salaries that are low compared to the salaries for careers in finance, consulting, or law, I’d guess that more and more young people are choosing highly paid work.
Remember that song by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson?
“Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks —
Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys
'Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone
Even with someone they love.”
Today, they’d sing it about professors — they never stay home and they’re always alone, even with subjects they love.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China | Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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