
Enough's enough: Contract teaching at a Canadian University - nous
https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/enoughs-enough-6c56afe36d00
======
aminbandali
I've been fortunate enough to have Andrew (the author) as my Physics prof,
last year.

Although I've always enjoyed and understood physics (to my own share) before,
the way he taught it all of a sudden made everything much more clear. I could
see the connections between each concept and the next.

To be able to teach this well, indeed requires a lot of experience; and as
much hard work and passion; and Andrew does/has all of that, despite all these
issues.

> I would like to give my students the very best learning experience that I
> possibly can.

I could't agree more. Not only is he knowledgeable, but he's also great at
conveying it.

I'm writing this comment in a hurry but I really felt I had to write it. I'll
write a follow up in near future; and I'll try to explain the situtation from
a student's point of view too. All I can say right now is that this is not
what he (and many other Contract Instructors) deserves.

If you ever read this, Andrew, I'd like to thank you again for all you've done
for me, and many others. Please keep aspiring and inspiring us.

~~~
eigenvector
In my experience in governance at A Highly Ranked Canadian Research
University, where most top administrative posts were held by tenured
professors, they tend to take the view of "well, I successfully negotiated the
gauntlet of obtaining tenure through my research, if you can't do the same,
tough luck."

Dean, department head and provostial positions are heavily weighted toward
highly successful researchers who have effectively "retired" into
administration and seem not to consider teaching to be one of the university's
core functions.

It's easier to convince these people to hire another janitor @ $70k/year than
to give a contract teacher a full-time job at the same salary since to them
bringing non-researchers into the ranks of permanent faculty is equivalent to
letting the barbarians into Rome.

~~~
kylebrown
The last paragraph from one of his follow-up articles, The Importance of Going
Viral, is relevant:

"In fact the response has been overwhelmingly positive from everyone, except
regular faculty. Not one message of support from anyone in a tenured position,
in Physics or any other department. The status quo has considerable appeal
when you are in the position of privilege."

~~~
theorique
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it!" (Upton Sinclair)

------
GuiA
I feel for the author. I really do; we need great teachers giving their best
to the students, and it won't happen unless they're not living in poverty. On
a more personal level, it sucks to feel like you have to heavily compromise
for your dream job.

I was on a similar path about 4 years ago- 2 years into a PhD, preparing
myself for a career in academia devoted to the two intellectual loves of my
life: computer science research and teaching. And then I saw my older lab
mates on the verge of graduation, struggling to get a decent offer that wasn't
halfway around the world. I saw post docs in my lab, who had been working hard
for years for very little pay and no prospect of "tenure track" anytime soon.

What did I do? I left for startup landia, where a company was willing to pay
me 3x more than I could have made as a post doc 5 years later (and many times
more what I made as a grad student). Now I work in R&D at a large company,
paid way more than even a tenured professor (and I'm not even considered
senior yet). The research is different, but just as gratifying at the end of
the day. And I get to teach by volunteering for a non profit over the
weekends.

Does it suck that I had to leave academia for a comfortable life? Absolutely.
I wish I could have been a professor. But you have to vote with your feet,
because as long as you accept the conditions imposed by the university, well
nothing's going to change- why would they? Writing blog posts and sending
ranty emails to students (who probably don't give a shit) isn't going to
change much at all.

If you want to have an impact, quit your job and go somewhere else. Right now
universities can afford to pay professors (ie the only ones doing real work)
like shit and give great bonuses to administrators because professors are okay
with this. Yes, that's right: you might be writing a blog post saying how
upset you are, but at the end of the day, if you're employed by them then you
agree with them. Things will change if enough professors quit and universities
have to offer better pays to get quality teachers; but as long as that doesn't
happen, things won't change.

~~~
throwawaymsft
Exactly. Ironically, it seems many academics don't do the research to see what
happens with a career in academia.

The market will pay for jobs at their replacement cost. If a stream of
aspiring professors are willing to work for near poverty wages, with the
occasional complaint, that is what they'll get. Why would the administration
pay more?

(If a gas station starts charging $10/gallon, you get your supplies from
another. Even if gas provides tremendous value to you, and you internally
value it at $100/gal. Only if fuel isn't available elsewhere do you pay the
higher cost.)

~~~
vlasev
I think it's because the academics start off as trusting students. At my
school the professors kept telling us how wonderful it is to have a math
degree and that you'll do this and that no problem. They push you to go to
graduate school because you show promise. Only to be paid very little and have
a difficult future. Of course you don't do your due diligence at first because
you trust your profs. And by the time you get to graduate school there is a
sort of momentum that keeps you in.

~~~
ohyes
As Someone who was an undergrad in philosphy; none of my professors were
pushing for grad school, they know the market is flooded.

~~~
PaulHoule
Physics is a field that has been irresponsible about this for years, at least
since the first PhD unemployment crisis of 1969. Most other fields practice
"birth control", and professors in many fields are shocked when they see that
fewer than 5% of physics PhD(s) stay in the field.

This guy unfortunately has a bad bargaining position because (i) there are a
lot of people to replace him, and (ii) most of them come from the third world
so the opportunity to live in Canada and get paid $34,000 in loonies looks
great to them.

(The other area of academia that is this bad is biotech, where you can spend
as long as you like in postdocs, but getting to a tenured position is
unlikely)

------
Lazare
Universities don't offer any more than they have to. Apparently you can pay
less than $30k a year to get a hard-working instructor with a Phd to teach
your students. So, that's what they do. I'm sure this guy is awesome, but the
reason he's being offered a pittance is because he and the people like him
will accept it. If nobody would teach classes for less than $50k, then that's
what they'd get paid.

It's the flip side of the big companies complaining about a skills shortage
and advocating for increased immigration. Yeah, it's hard to hire an engineer
in Silicon Valley for peanuts. But there's no god given right to be able to
hire cheap labour, and if you really want to hire someone, pay the market
rate, or stop whining about it.

I'm also not thrilled by the email he sent the student. I feel like
communicating with students outside of class time is absolutely part of the
job of instructor; his email reads to me like someone saying "I'm not paid
enough to do the entire job I was hired for". That wouldn't fly in any other
context. If he decided to just not show up to some lectures he was hired to
teach, what would the university say if he told them he wasn't being paid
enough to attend every class? He may be dealing with a shitty deal from the
administratio, but passing it along to those even weaker than him is hardly
admirable.

Now, despite my tone above, I am sympathetic. He's doing a crap job for little
pay. I have empathy for him! But he's the one who signed up to do a crap job
for little pay, and keeps signing up to do it again every year. And that makes
him part of the problem.

Ultimately, there's only so many teaching slots available, and there's a
fuckton of Phd graduates desperate to obtain one regardless of the salary or
employment terms. Doubling the salary won't increase the number of teaching
slots available (more likely decrease it), and it won't decrease the number of
Phd grads looking to teach (it would absolutely increase it). Academia is
already a lottery where the many chase the tiny number of tenure slots; does
making the competition even fiercer and more Darwinian help improve the
fairness?

~~~
Perceval
> there's only so many teaching slots available, and there's a fuckton of Phd
> graduates desperate to obtain one regardless of the salary or employment
> terms

This is another problem produced by academic exploitation. Ph.D. students are
produced 10-to-1 relative to tenure track jobs. Why would universities eat
$50-60,000 in tuition and pay $25–35,000 in stipends per year per graduate
student if they know they are over-enrolling? It's not like Ph.D. students
bring money into a department, regardless of their level of "desperation" to
get a terminal degree. That's a big and unnecessary loss to take every single
year.

The answer is that grad students, like adjuncts, free the professors from the
most onerous aspect of teaching classes: doing all the grading. In exchange
for tuition and stipend, grad students have to serve as TAs once or twice a
year (in some departments they can also take positions as Research Assistants
or as administrators for undergrad programs). Some grad students will get the
opportunity to sole-teach their own seminars. Because professors do not want
to teach, and want to focus entirely on their personal research program and
publications, having an excess of grad students around to grade, guest
lecture, and fill out the course offerings every semester is worth the
$25-$35,000 annual stipend (about the same that the adjunct professor writing
this article makes).

You're right that universities don't have to offer any more than $35,000 +
shitty benefits + no job security, because the adjuncts and grad students will
still take the opportunity believing that it might turn into an opportunity to
move up into the professoriate if they just work hard enough or if their next
publication is just a little more brilliant. Doesn't change the fact that it's
still a cynical and hypocritical exploitation of the "intellectual reserve
army of labor" (to paraphrase Marx). Universities are some of the most leftist
institutions in North America, but the professoriate and deanery are perfectly
fine with naked exploitation both on the supply side (grad students) and the
demand side (adjuncts).

If departments need graders, they should hire masters students rather than
admit Ph.D. students and then cynically consume 5–10 years of their life. If
departments need teachers to supplement their researchers, they should create
a position distinct from tenure-track professor/reader, perhaps "lecturer,"
but that is not "part-time"/contract work and is compensated appropriately.

~~~
analog31
_This is another problem produced by academic exploitation. Ph.D. students are
produced 10-to-1 relative to tenure track jobs. Why would universities eat
$50-60,000 in tuition and pay $25–35,000 in stipends per year per graduate
student if they know they are over-enrolling? It 's not like Ph.D. students
bring money into a department, regardless of their level of "desperation" to
get a terminal degree. That's a big and unnecessary loss to take every single
year._

In my field, no competent grad student paid tuition, and it wasn't a
meaningful measure of value or cost. Nobody would have accepted an offer from
a grad program that didn't provide a full ride. So tuition was basically funny
money, like a "list price" that is always discounted.

My research work brought in enough grant money to pay for my stipend plus
equipment and other expenses. If anybody was taking a loss, it was the
National Science Foundation.

~~~
Perceval
Grants are easier to come by in certain fields than in others. Natural
sciences, for the most part, have it much easier than social sciences and
humanities.

Tuition begins to matter when students lose funding. Then it's no longer
"funny money." According to the Ph.D. completion project, between 50–60% of
students that enter a Ph.D. program finish it by the 10 year mark:
[http://www.phdcompletion.org/quantitative/book1_quant.asp](http://www.phdcompletion.org/quantitative/book1_quant.asp)

Most programs guarantee funding only through the first 4–6 years. Some
programs make students compete against one another for quasi-guaranteed
funding after a certain point.

A substantial minority of graduate students are either going to quit the
program with only a masters degree to show for it or are going to end up
paying tuition. Usually they can reduce the amount of tuition paid by
enrolling as a "non-resident student" or something similar. But the tuition
rate (and how long they will cover tuition) isn't something that can be
brushed aside, either by students managing their finances, or by departments
assessing their budgets.

~~~
jkaunisv1
Assuming some amount of my taxes goes towards funding these grants, I'd much
rather that money goes towards funding advances in battery or materials
technology than to in-depth analyses of Shakespeare. There are advancements
and improvements to be made in fields like social work and law but I don't
think they'll be made by writing dissertations.

Also, are you saying some PhD's take 10 years to complete, not including
undergrad/masters? My understanding was a PhD on its own was typically a 3-6
year endeavour. I know it's a difficult project to manage but 10 years seems
long.

~~~
theorique
That's probably averaged over all disciplines. The better-funded disciplines
(CS, engineering, natural sciences, etc) have better outcomes in the sense of
shorter time-to-completion. There's a lot more attrition in arts and social
sciences, as I understand it.

------
sandworm
I'm also part of the problem. I teach one course a year. So it's far from a
fulltime thing. The pay is about 100$ per hour OF LECTURE. Considering the
prep time needed, and the mandatory unpaid interaction with students after
hours, it probably works out to 10-15$/hour. I'm part of the problem because I
don't much care about the money. I teach because it impresses my clients,
which brings me more realworld consulting work.

Let's do the math for the last lecture I taught. 30 students pay about 900
each to take my class. That's 27K. But I also know half of the school's budget
comes from the province (ie government support). So let's double that to say
50K, of which I take home 4 ... 8% to the instructor and the rest to the
admins.

I think the real issue is the larger move towards academic admin as a separate
profession from teaching. None of my four bosses have ever taught a class. Law
schools are probably the last vestige of the old system whereby most admins
are senior profs, not professional administrators.

~~~
refurb
_But I also know half of the school 's budget comes from the province (ie
government support)_

Are you sure it's 50%? Back when i was in university in Canada the gov't paid
80% of the tuition.

~~~
eigenvector
It varies by province. In Ontario, the per-student funding grant hasn't
increased (in absolute $) in over a decade, so it has fallen to 40-45% of
overall revenue.

------
striking
The author posted this reply, as a sort of continuation to the story:
[https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c...](https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c8e634)

~~~
Estragon
I guess he's given up. Whining in public like that seems like a really bad
idea, if he's serious about landing a permanent position.

------
IkmoIkmo
I'm now 24, if I got a job stacking shelves at a local supermarket I'd get
paid 14 euros an hour without needing a diploma. He effectively makes 16 euros
an hour, only I build up my pension, get more time off, get benefits and
protection, and he's in his 50s with over a decade of teaching experience for
which he receives excellent ratings, has a PhD in Physics and work experience
at a Nuclear facility.

This seems awfully silly, especially with the cost of education having
outpaced CPI by a wide margin for the past what, 3-4 decades while classroom
sizes ballooned to 200.

~~~
pyre
> cost of education having outpaced CPI

"CEO wages" have also out-paced the CPI. I'm sure the administration isn't
paying themselves a pittance (and that in a budget crisis their salaries are
the last on the chopping block)...

~~~
acdha
Also, don't forget how many more administrators there are than in the past
after a few decades of growing at considerably higher rate than either
students or faculty, and with a considerably higher median wage. That's a
large group of people who have more time to focus on resisting any cuts since
they don't have to spend time on the publish-or-perish cycle.

------
smoyer
You have no future ... there are too many people that want to teach at
universities and when the labor pool us too large for the market, prices,
terms and working conditions will be depressed. We're still cranking out PhDs
that have no hope of a university position, so I expect your chance of earning
a living will drop.

I can't comment on employment elsewhere on the continent, but in Pennsylvania
(US) there is a severe shortage of AP Physics, AP Chemistry and Calculus
teachers. You could easily land a full-time job at a high-school here.

------
zaroth
Plentiful cheap labor, abusive bureaucratic and lethargic organisational
structure, plentiful federal subsidies... why aren't we seeing more startup
universities / community colleges snapping up these over-qualified and
underpaid professors for themselves and offering them to the highly subsidized
and eager student population?

At some levels, college is a popularity contest to get the best credential. At
other levels, college really is about learning the necessary skills to enter
the work force.

Is government and self-regulation of education really such an incredible
barrier to entry that new entrants can't offer better deals to the best
teachers and still compete?

Edit: I am seriously considering getting together with 10 other parents I
know, and we can just collectively pay someone like this to teach our kids all
day. He could teach a class of 10 kids for a year, earn 3x as much, and we
would still be paying less than half what the private school down the street
costs.

~~~
zo1
Khan's Academy, Coursera, etc. I even donate to one of them as I think it's
the future of learning, free from government intervention that seems to cause
so much malaise these days. But that's a long, other discussion, before anyone
jumps on it.

And to tell you the truth, I've often flirted with a similar idea to the one
you mentioned at the end. That, along with plain home-schooling. So it doesn't
necessarily have to be a "startup" that disrupts the current teaching
ecosystem. It can simply be a bunch of parents buckling-down and doing what
_they_ think is best for their children.

Hopefully they don't make home-schooling illegal, as I've noticed it occurring
in a few places. That would make it impossibly to change the status-quo
without breaking the law.

~~~
zaroth
From Wikipedia anyway, "Since the late 1980s, the focus on the legality of
homeschooling in general is no longer in serious debate but legal questions
have shifted to whether homeschooling communities can access state school
funds, facilities, and resources."

I think it's a very exciting model. A small private co-op of like-minded
parents with 10-15 like-aged children, hiring a single truly excellent
teacher, and paying them about $100k per year, while supplementing with access
to public school resources in the local town to which they are entitled for
extra-curricular and filler classes.

The "classroom" would float between public areas like libraries, parks,
museums, and local areas of interest, and rooms made available in the parents'
residences.

I think the model is particularly attractive K-8. I guess the only problem is
the kids would be so far ahead by 9th grade they would have to go straight to
college rather than high school. :-/

~~~
ars
> the legality of homeschooling in general is no longer in serious debate

In the US. In some (many? most?) European countries homeschooling is illegal.
They believe that anyone who wants to homeschool is an abusive parent who
wants to keep/hide their child from the public, or wants to teach them strange
things.

I have argued with some people from countries like this was absolutely
astonished at how they defended this outrage. They absolutely refused to
believe that parents might choose this because (if the parents are able to do
it) academically it's clearly better.

~~~
rjaco31
Uh? Do you have any example of European countries which ban homeschooling?
AFAIK it's legal everywhere.

~~~
friendzis
It's not illegal to home-school. Although, home schooling does not entitle you
to get any officially approved certification of skills. You are on your own to
prove your worth and go through the hiring process without any diploma.

Hypothetical scenario: it is not illegal to do your own electrical wiring in a
house. However, the electrical company will only allow you to connect to their
networks if your cabling is done by certified electrician. You can team up
with some people in your area, build a power plant and happily run your own
cabling. It's not illegal, so why complain?

~~~
rjaco31
We don't have the same definition of homeschooling then. In most of the
countries where it's legal (see the wikipedia link posted), you are actually
following official courses by snailmail, and you eventually get a real diploma
identical to the one you would have if you had attended school.

So totally different from "just learning on your own".

------
patmcc
Strike, if you're unionized. Quit, if you aren't. Encourage others like you to
do the same.

This isn't going to get better if you're willing to keep doing this job at
that wage. You really need to walk away.

~~~
tonyarkles
It's interesting that. I taught a sessional course a little further west
(University of Saskatchewan) and sessionals there are unionized, whether you
want to or not. One of the perks of this is that after you've taught the same
course 3 times, you have right-of-first-refusal; i.e. if that course opens up
to be taught by a sessional, the department offer it to you before they open
it up to a general competition.

Apparently that's not the case at Carleton.

------
Balgair
Well, when others see a cloud, it is good to see needed rain.

We have all these very smart, very hard working, very dedicated, and very
cheap (relatively) people that the ivory tower just uses as doormats. Guys,
there is an opportunity here as big as a boulder. The question is: How do we
get these people to work for us? How do we get them to to view our ventures as
just as valuable as academia? Is it just as simple as : "Work for us, make a
decent salary, make cool things, then, on Fridays/Saturdays, go downtown and
give a lecture to people." ? Is that all these grad students and post-docs
want? It seems like there is a need and a place to fill it for the right
company.

~~~
rm445
I don't think it's the opportunity to teach or lecture. The allure of academia
comes from a kind of status, intellectual rather than social. So long as
you're in the academic world, you're on the path of Newton, Gauss or whoever
else floats your boat. Out in the world you're just making money.

The academic world is carefully arranged as a linear sequence which you can
progress along but which is halted if you leave. It's expected that very
little you could do out in the commercial world could aid your academic
career, without at least the involvement of a university. At best you can
return to the same point along the trail but it may be much harder.

The reinforcement begins with undergraduate students. The teaching and
particularly grading, hence status, reward those suited for research. (This
was particularly evident to me as a mechanical engineering student - the field
is broad and empirical, but the examination of my course rewarded nothing but
mathematical ability. And of course if you DO fly through the exams,
interested professors will be gauging your interest in doing a PhD with them
before long and it all clicks into place).

As a postgraduate student you will sit underneath portraits of your idols and
eat dinners with the academics you're encouraged to look up to, be fed
anecdotes and inside knowledge. The lecturers and postdocs you meet will be
judged by their research ability and are already self-selected for a good
mental fit with the system. It's universally acknowledged that salaries are
higher elsewhere, but leaving would involve abandoning the track of research
progression they're already entrained with. (It brings to mind the joke about
the elephant-deconstipator at the circus who could never contemplate leaving
showbiz).

I don't write any of this with rancour or ill-feeling, nor do I wish to over-
egg things and make it seem like indoctrination. More like academia is a
successful meme that shares characteristics with other enduring systems. If
one wishes to poach from this particular set of people who are highly capable
but driven by intellectual status (as well as of course their legitimate
intellectual research interest) then one needs to offer them a substitute
status.

Concrete suggestions to achieve this:

\- Professional certification. I'm sure a lot of people here hate the idea but
progression towards say being a Chartered Software Engineer might motivate
academic types.

\- Maintain university links. Collaborate with universities, offer
secondments, let employees collaborate along their research interests. This
isn't novel, good research organisations already do this. But it's probably
rarer for the Silicon Valley 'Twitter for Dogs' type startups being involved
with this sort of thing.

\- Invent some other kind of new status or proxy for status. My point is that
offering enough money to compensate for dropping one's academic dreams
presumably won't work, since such money is already on offer, and PhDs remain
predominantly focused on the academic track rather than using their talents
elsewhere.

------
dollaaron
From the email it seems the student just wants to see his exam, hardly an
unreasonable request. He doesn't ask for a "review," of the exam, and this
seems like it should take all of two seconds. He walks in, takes the exam, and
leaves. If the exam can't leave your room, he walks in during office hours,
looks at the exam, and returns it. I've caught multiple grading errors simply
by actually collecting past exams, and would be understandably pissed off if I
was given no opportunity to collect an exam I'd taken.

While the contract teaching situation seems pretty bad, this guy seems
unreasonable here.

~~~
inclemnet
> hardly an unreasonable request. He doesn't ask for a "review," of the exam,
> and this seems like it should take all of two seconds

It doesn't change the context that the instructor isn't being paid to do it -
he says he's already spent more time on the course than contracted. From his
point of view, it's not an unreasonable request that he should not spent more
of his (insufficiently remunerated) time on even small issues.

> and would be understandably pissed off if I was given no opportunity to
> collect an exam I'd taken.

But does that make it reasonable to blame a guy who's not paid to help you for
not helping you?

I do understand the nature of your point, but I don't think any of the
original argument is actually affected by the size of the task he's refusing
to do.

~~~
dollaaron
If he holds office hours regularly (as the email seems to imply), then there
is nothing extra he has to do but let the student find his exam in the pile.

~~~
inclemnet
So...nothing except something? This takes time and effort, even if just a
little, and I suspect it adds up more than you guess. And all unpaid - an
actual loss, in fact, since it distracts from whatever he's currently working
on.

I do see why you argue this way, and I might agree except that I also would
give weighting to the moral point he's making. Staff like this are
systematically exploited, and working to contract is a classic way to try to
demonstrate why they should be better supported - it's a direct attempt to
make a larger point, not just a random choice to annoy a few students.

~~~
dollaaron
I'd agree with the broader point that this guy is making, he's being exploited
by the university, and doesn't owe the school any additional work.

That being said, he does owe his students the chance to at least look at the
culmination of their semester's work. I know at my university, professors are
obligated to have exams available for at least a year past the date they were
taken! Maybe if allowing students to look at their exams would truly take an
additional 75 hours of his time as claimed, he'd have a stronger case, but
that's simply not true. If the student was requesting him to explain why a
problem was wrong, or engage with this exam in anyway, I'd be completely in
agreement. Hell, he could just put them all in a box outside his door, or
maybe leave them with the departmental secretary (this happens all the time),
or come up with some sort of solution.

His broader point still stands, but this is absolutely part of the
responsibilities of a teacher, and I can't get behind this guy making a point
at the expense of his students.

~~~
Coding_Cat
Are commuters to blame for the poor working conditions in the public transport
industry? No. Do commuters suffer when conductors go on strike? Yes. Does it
work? Yes. Does complaining to your boss work? No. Its unfortunate but at the
end of the day the only thing he can use (apart from quitting outright) as
leverage is malicious compliance, which includes working the exact hours your
paid and nothing more.

I feel for the student, but a workers' rights are more important to me. If I
were in the students position I would be pissed, but not at the professor but
at the institution. The same way I don't get mad at conductors going on strike
because of poor working conditions even if I have already bought a ticket.

The 75 hours was also in reference to allowing every student to do the same
(you either allow all students to have a look, or none), and I can tell from
experience that it will end up taking quite a bit of time. Most students mean
"could you go over the exam with me" when they ask to review their exam. Just
having them glance at the red markings will generally not do them much good
anyway. And putting them in a box for pick-up (while also being more unpaid
work) is generally not allowed in my opinion. The university holds on to the
exams for administrative purposes, meaning he would have to supply photocopies
instead.

(Source: TAing and TAing friends)

------
morgante
So long as bright young students continue to ignore market realities and
pursue academic careers, nothing will change.

In fact, as a taxpayer and student I would be upset if my university
unilaterally chose to pay more than the market would bear. So long as highly-
educated individuals will accept reaching jobs for $34,000 a year, that is
precisely what we should continue to pay them—doing otherwise would be an
inefficiency in operations which would drive up the already high cost of
education.

Unfortunately, even in his follow up he fails to acknowledge that market
realities are the cause of his fate:
[https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/jump-to-
conclusions-4044...](https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/jump-to-
conclusions-40446decf18a)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>In fact, as a taxpayer and student I would be upset if my university
unilaterally chose to pay more than the market would bear.

Why would you be upset that a public institution decided to behave humanely
rather than exploitatively?

~~~
morgante
I don't see anything in the article to suggest this is exploitation (see my
response to girvo). He is choosing to work in a low wage job because it offers
him flexible hours.

I hold public institutions to the same standard of efficiency in accomplishing
their goals a private ones (mainly, not paying people extra for no reason).
The only difference is that their goals are public, not private.

~~~
andrewr_physics
The University already has permanent positions (lecturer/instructor) defined
in their salary structure. Which are relatively well paid and have the same
workload that I do now. But they are pretending that my job is a rolling
"temp" position, because it's cheap and they can get away with it. That's the
bottom line. And they have to be stopped getting away with it. That's why I
wrote the article. And I have overwhelming support from present and former
students too.

------
idiot900
I don't understand why he doesn't attempt to leave the university and get a
job as a programmer. CAD 34k is a joke and less than the stipend I received as
a graduate student.

~~~
Lazare
Given his writing ability, degree, and student reviews I imagine he's quite
capable of doing so.

Since he doesn't, all I can assume is that he values the intangibles of
teaching enough that it makes up for the incredibly low salary.

~~~
MaysonL
to quote from a followup article[0]

"And then we get to the “Why doesn’t he quit and get a proper job?” people.
The answer is, I’m 52 years old. There aren’t that many job opportunities
coming my way. Have you tried getting a job in Ottawa these days? And I can’t
move elsewhere. My younger son is in a fabulous Special Needs School here in
Ottawa, with wonderful teachers, we have the specialist doctors at the
Children’s Hospital, and a pool of wonderfully talented therapists to work
with him. He needs to be here, and so I need to be here in Ottawa. He needs
round the clock attention, so I need flexible working hours, which University
teaching gives me."

[0] [https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/jump-to-
conclusions-4044...](https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/jump-to-
conclusions-40446decf18a)

~~~
owen_griffiths
OK, so there are benefits to the job beyond salary. You can't mix and match -
oh I'll have the conditions of job A, with the pay of job B.

~~~
Coding_Cat
He is already doing job B, while on paper it still says A. (fulltime work
without benefits for an hourly wage comparable to an intern). That's the
problem.

------
a3n
No one should go into teaching at any level, K-12 and up, until the existing
teachers and professors start dying off, quitting and retiring.

This treatment, for this skill, commitment, experience and education, is
terrible. But it's enabled by all the people who hire in. Stop doing that,
you're more than capable of doing something that society values. And no,
society doesn't value teaching, or they'd pay you. What they value is poverty
rates.

And if schools and universities "solve" the problem by hiring whatever the
educational equivalent of an H1-B is, then they're just restating their
position: we don't value quality teaching, not enough to pay a fair rate.

Don't teach.

~~~
jsprogrammer
We should have a pleasant planet in a couple decades if everyone follows this
advice. /s

All of human progress up this point can be wiped out in a generation if it's
not passed on to the new individuals in the world.

Seriously, how is this good advice? If anything we should be encouraging more
people to teach their knowledge and to get people interested in learning.
Instead of shutting everything down, how about we figure out how to make
things better?

~~~
jschwartzi
You could start by paying more and making it easier to enter the profession.
If it's as valuable as you say, surely you'd be willing to pay more than he
could make as a cleaner or a convenience store clerk.

~~~
jsprogrammer
And how do I pay for that?

~~~
a3n
Three ways: raise tuition, reduce administration costs, or de-emphasize the
obsession with Egyption pyramid scale building. Probably others.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I've already graduated and I likely won't be returning as a paying student, so
these aren't really viable options for me.

------
andrewr_physics
As the author of the articles. I'd just like to say that walking out and
finding another job is not as easy as you might think in Ottawa at my age. And
also if I leave, the system just continues. I'd leave my successor in the
lurch. And I'm not prepared to do that.

Not on my watch.

Sometimes you have to go public and take a risk, and do the _right_ thing. Not
the easy thing.

cheers

Andrew

And yes, there is a real risk that I could lose the job. So before you condemn
my actions, remember that.

------
snake_case
On a related note, University of Toronto contract professors are about to
strike because of low wages.

Source:
[http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/02/12/u-of...](http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/02/12/u-of-
t-non-tenured-staff-poised-for-strike-feb-27.html)

------
kriro
How hard is it to found a new university and get accredited degrees in Canada
(or the US)? Seems like there's quite the opportunity to do just that if you
can identify excellent and underpayed teachers.

I think many students primarely look at the teaching and don't care all that
much about the research output (outside of name recognition/can I get a job
with a degree from X-university which is the initial motivator).

Well executed positioning, offer great teachers more money/benefits/being
treated like a human being and you could have a nicel little university set
up.

------
markhahn
I'm salaried tech staff at a major .ca univ, and have done sessional teaching.
I think the pay rate is approximately appropriate. yes, it's not great for a
career, but neither is flipping burgers. sure, it's not the same thing, but
why should just doing something for N years force your employer to change your
status and pay you more?

teaching is one of the univ's core functions, but it's not the only one. the
career of a normal prof is and always has been primarily a function of their
research contribution. yes, they also teach, and have to teach well, but
teaching is time consuming, so inherently eats into research productivity. why
is everyone here bitching about how tenured profs don't like to teach?

also remember that by "research activity", a prof also includes upper-level
honors students and grad students.

the real conflict in universities today is about the revenue associated with
undergrads, especially the tension between well-funded parts (engineering) and
all the other parts (science, arts, humanities) which do so much of the
teaching for hordes of eng undergrads.

~~~
danielweber
> yes, it's not great for a career, but neither is flipping burgers.

If the candidates were told this, I'd be fine. (I can easily imagine a world
where most teachers happily work for low wages, because they've already done
their primary career and are now retired, but are staying active in the
community and passing on their knowledge.)

But lots of these candidates were lied to and told things like "there are a
lot of professors retiring soon, so new spots will open up, so you can teach
for a few years and then be ready to grab those spots." Meanwhile the full
professors are making six figures and stringing along the adjuncts with
promises of tenure, some day.

~~~
markhahn
No, I don't believe incoming grad students would be told an outlandish lie
like that. People in academia are extremely aware of how low the rate of "job
creation" is. Profs are quite honest with grad students, since the supervising
relationship is quite familial and personal. (Less so for coursework-only MS
programs, of course.)

You also don't seem to understand tenure progression. An adjunct isn't tenure
track: this is explicit from the beginning. Anyone hired on tenure track has a
"tenure clock" during which they have to qualify (basically, publish enough
good papers). Typically about 5 years, and if they don't make it, they're
gone.

------
funkyy
I like the article, but on the other side - I hate how he wants a student to
complaint. Why he puts his own student in a situation where he suggest he
should complaint? Why he tell student how much money does he make? I find this
non-professional. If he have a problem with this - him and other contractors
should do something about it, not looking for others to find a solution. This
is very socialist way of looking at solution.

I am not agreeing about how schooling system works as imo it should be all
results based - eg. minimum wage + results based bonus. As an addition any
sick days/pension would be calculated on average yearly wages adjusted by days
off. This way universities would get rid of teachers that cannot deliver the
results, scientists that do everything to stay on payroll without doing
anything and more.

System like that would promote teachers to spend occasionally overtime
teaching students to maintain good results. And since testing would be done
independently - it would be fool proof system. As close to capitalism as you
can get in a schooling system.

------
wahsd
Has anyone heard a theory that the environment and types of scenario that the
author is describing could be the result of concerted efforts to undermine the
American education system?

I know it sounds rather far fetched, but does no one remember the animus and
rhetoric that has emanated from the right side of our political range, mostly
between the 80s and 00s? It seems to me rather odd that just as the rhetoric
takes a notable back seat the corporatization of education starts kicking in.

First, there was the huge push for charter schools in the 00s, then there was
the deluge and influx of for profit schools that provide little more than a
false certification of largely inappropriate skill.

I don't want to make this too long, but if you were a wealthy magnate that
loathed society's contempt for your psychopathic will, what better way to
attack that pesky government than by eroding its foundation. I'm not saying
that the legacy schools have been undermined, although they too have seen
standards slide and cracks have begun to appear, but if you can't attack the
institution directly, what better way to undermine the source of competent
staff to the government than by washing out the soil under the foundation with
sham universities and a cadre of people who have a "degree" from an
"accredited" university?

Along with a hiring preference for military experience, which pollutes
competencies, once you throw in people with hollow degrees, you really start
seeing your most hated agencies, i.e., EPA, IRS, etc. crumbling, while making
your loved agencies, i.e., DoD, DHS, etc. that are a source of money and
power, become nice and pliable.

It's just a theory, but let me put it this way, I am paid for strategy, and
that is a rough idea for a mid length strategy proposal depending on desired
outcomes.

~~~
parasubvert
I don't really buy this for higher education in general, there's too much
diversity in funding and ownership, and it's much cheaper to build and pay for
your own school (which the Kochs have done).

Public education I think there is much more evidence of systematic
undermining. But that could be more about misguided ideological libertarianism
rather than an actual desire to undermine the country. That's the trouble with
ideology - empirical evidence can't sway you until it's too late.

I also have had a much better experience with ex-military types than not, in
terms of their management abilities, and a fairly representative mix of
political ideology too (they're not all conservatives).

------
apike
Undergrads and sessional instructors tend to think of the primary job of a
university to provide well-taught classes. On the flipside, university
management and the faculty running each department are often much less focused
on teaching than you might hope.

Research, recruiting grad students, sports, student services, and facilities
are all things that may worry a university administrator more than ensuring
the best teaching is going on in their undergraduate classes. The more
familiar you become with how a university is run, the more you'll realize that
the goals undergrads think the university should have are quite different than
the goals it really has.

For example, if a great teacher leaves and is replaced with a grad student
with weak teaching skills, that can show up on an administrator's spreadsheet
as a win because that grad student was dependent on the university for living
expenses.

~~~
jackmaney
In research universities, research tends to occupy the focus of the tenure-
track faculty, as well. Publications pave the way to tenure. Teaching
evaluations may help one's tenure case slightly (if they're outstanding) or
hurt a little bit (if they're really bad). Being in/chairing the right
committees can help a little bit, as well. However, the lion's share of one's
tenure case often comes down to research.

------
ChrisArchitect
the followup wherein Andrew received a card from the University President and
sent it back was pretty epic [https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c...](https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c8e634)

------
TheMagicHorsey
My advice is don't participate in the broken educational institutions.

Take up a job somewhere else, and teach the way Salman Khan of Khan Academy
started teaching. Just start teaching on YouTube and helping students on
Skype. Your paid job should sustain you.

Using your skills, you should be able to get a 9-5 job somewhere that pays you
better than what you are getting paid now, which should leave 15-20 hours for
your teaching side project.

I started teaching programming to a few people in this way, while I was
employed in another (non-programming) profession.

Teaching is more rewarding when you don't have to follow someone else's rules
and curriculum.

~~~
zdw
And what if you're teaching something that, when done improperly, could be
actively dangerous in the teaching process? Many of the sciences are like that
- biology and chemistry experiments gone wrong, etc..

Or what if equipment required to perform the teaching is extremely expensive,
like lab equipment, telescopes, etc.

While the DIY approach is nice if you're doing something that doesn't have
many unique/expensive prerequisites (beyond internet access and a computer),
there's a whole lot of stuff out there that needs real hands on instruction
using expensive gear.

------
ilaksh
I keep seeing more evidence that the economy is not doing well. I am also a
contract worker. I am a programmer. I believe that there is not enough money
going around/being generated by consumer spending to actually pay the majority
of the workforce real competitive salaries with benefits.

Even in the startup world I believe there is a crunch. There is a fair amount
of funding being thrown around, but for the most part the money running
operations at startups is not actual revenue but capital funds. And not
everyone works at a well-funded startup.

------
csa
I am sad to say that this guy just made himself a persona non grata as an
adjunct not just at his current school, but at any school. Adjuncts are
perceived as a commodity, and the administrators absolutely do not care
whether he is a good teacher or not.

I strongly suggest this person start looking for jobs in industry. Once a
convenient opportunity comes along to stop offering him work, the admins will
do so.

If he wants to continue teaching, I suggest he use one of the online services
that will actually pay him well if he can teach a difficult course well.

------
rcconf
I work as a contact teacher for a local college (on top of my full time job)
and it's sort of absurd the way they pay you. I get paid for 3 hours during
lectures (60/hr), but not for any of the work I do outside of the school
(marking, creating lectures, creating assignments)

I have realized that I should be payed way more and I'm having serious doubts
of continuing to teach given the pay. The only reason I'm actually teaching is
because it looks good on a resume and I want to improve my presentation
skills.

Note:

I also teach in Canada.

~~~
bobbles
For context, when I worked as an education consultant for a corporation, I
would bill 1 week of work for preparation, 1 day for the session (if it was a
day long) and then 1 day for review and reconciliation.

It's ridiculous how little educators in a UNIVERSITY get compensated. I'm glad
I got out of that environment early.

~~~
fnbr
My father works as an engineering consultant for major oil companies, and he
has the same deal. He charges the companies for every hour he spends preparing
for the presentation, so the actual presentation can be less than 10% of the
invoiced amount.

If you look at what tenure track professors do, it's the same thing. They'll
spend hours working on their lecture notes that they get paid for (admittedly,
most TT professors work 80 hour weeks). Not paying instructors to prepare for
class only guarantees that they'll under prepare.

------
adiM
Do Canadian universities hire "teaching professors"? Typically, professor also
do research and (varying degree of) service (examining PhD theses,
departmental and faculty committees, reviewing journal papers, etc.) in
addition to regular teaching (2 to 3 courses per year, sometimes more). Is the
author asking for a permanent position where none exists?

~~~
eigenvector
I graduated from the University of Toronto. Teaching-stream permanent faculty
positions are very, very rare. I was aware of only two such positions in the
entire engineering faculty.

------
nsimmons
I had no idea that adjunct staff were paid so poorly compared to regular full
time academic staff until I taught a class for one semester.

In my case it was in addition to my regular full time job so the money was not
as important to me. But to imagine someone trying to make a living from that
and considering the level of eduction required it just doesn't make sense to
me.

------
javert
The university system in the US (and apparently Canada) is socialism for the
rich.

This guy is getting screwed, and the Canadian taxpayers are getting screwed,
so that employers do not have to pay for their employees to go to college or
get other training (or factor it into their salaries to cover student loan
debt if they already have a degree).

I hope this guy shrugs and gets a better job.

~~~
Tideflat
While employers paying for training may work in economies were there is a high
level of worker loyalty, in Canada and the States, people change jobs
frequently. Thus, the employer wouldn't get to keep the benefit of the
training often, because the employee would leave to work for a employer who
pays high wages because it didn't pay for the training.

------
r-s
I received 30k/year while working for a professor while obtaining my
undergraduate degree (all I ever got) in CS. This was almost 10 years ago now,
in Canada, at a University in an area with a low cost of living. I thought
this was peanuts at the time as I was used to working in Northern Alberta.
Looking back, it seems I was very lucky.

------
andrewr_physics
As the author of the article, I'd like to comment that "Walking away" and
getting another job is not as easy as it sounds, when you are in your 50s. And
if I just walk away, some other person gets stuck in the same position. And
that I'm not prepared to let happen.

Not on my watch

Sometimes you have to do the right thing. Not the easy thing.

------
aaronchall
I've been an adjunct professor myself, 2 different little private schools at
the same time. It doesn't seem fair. But so many are qualified. So instead I
went to industry where I am paid 5 times more, and if I get the teaching bug
again, I can teach a night class or two. I think that's fair.

------
bobbles
Make sure you catch the follow up article as well:
[https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c...](https://medium.com/@AndrewR_Physics/i-was-not-
amused-b4a2e4c8e634)

------
hluska
You know, as horrible as this sounds, I don't feel bad for this professor.
Rather, I feel bad for the poor student whose education had to suffer because
of a labour dispute.

I strongly considered graduate school after I finished my undergrad, but the
job prospects were absolutely horrible. It took me three conversations with
trusted professors for me to realize that if I spent six or seven years of my
life working on a PhD, my expected return was about $30k Canadian a year.

Now, I would have loved to teach, but losing six years of earning power to
earn an expected $30k a year struck me as a particularly poor investment.
Heck, the expected annual return from applying at McDonalds exceeded that of
getting a PhD...

------
yCloser
eu teacher here, sadly sarcastically true:

This is the free market, if you are not willing to work for the money and
conditions we gave you someone else will. Next, please!

------
masmullin
This is the end result of all those "No Tuition Hikes" buttons my classmates
wore 10 years ago.

To all my classmates that wore those buttons, I TOLD YOU SO!

~~~
kriro
I disagree. As far as I know the tuitions hiked happily. In a nutshell it's
the end result of people shamelessly exploiting passion mixed with a bit of an
unhealthy research >> teaching attitude.

It's kind of like the academia counterpart to EA exploiting people enjoying
game development.

------
thomnific
Another contributing factor might be that there were a lot more jobs for
physics grads in Canada back in the heyday of Nortel, JDS Uniphase, etc.

------
quarterwave
i used to be a college teacher for several years & my sympathies are with the
author.

Advice for those considering this path in science/tech - learn to write code
on the side. Pick something mainstream that will be around for a while, and
which you can tap for a sideline. Develop deep expertise, spend as much time
continually educating yourself as you do for others.

~~~
mtbcoder
Contract programming parallels much of what he says about contract teaching,
with the added difficulty of having to track down and find projects to work
on.

"Learn to code in order to generate side income" isn't as simple as it sounds.
I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth.

------
mlashcorp
What's his h-index?

~~~
andrewr_physics
h = 20. I have 50 peer reviewed papers (with 1200+ citations), and a patent to
my name. And know what? It doesn't make a bit of difference.

------
maygravel87
good informative tips

------
johnnyg
"I was unable to comply with this request"

He was unwilling to comply, not unable.

Supply and demand is a thing.

------
bsdpython
In response to some of the comments here regarding graduate students being
taken advantage of...I don't get it. I fully understand an undergrad paying a
lot of money for a degree with a course of study that will not allow them to
find a good job. In that case, you are talking about people making a decision
with no college experience at the age of 18. In the case of graduate students
you are talking about 22+ year olds that have already gone through the higher
education process. I honestly don't see how someone can start working towards
a PhD in their 20s and not see the potentially grim prospects of a career in
academia. The only exception I would make is international students that
didn't do undergrad in the country of their graduate studies.

------
balaba
It's the corporatization that killed learning, just like it killed healthcare.
From rigid rules to unequal pay scales , there is no reason for a corporate
hierarchy except to make cannon fodder. Educators should go to work at Valve
to build 'Valve Academy'. The flat and free-spirited culture seems to be
working there. They have revolutionized game development and distribution.
They have enabled communities of people to exist and interact. The only thing
lacking is to formalize the knowledge that the gamers posses. Not just winning
strategies and tactics. But game design and game theory. This would require
knowledge from all the subjects conceivably taught at university - after all,
they are building virtual worlds, not just experiencing them.

