

The Freelance Professors are Coming - joeyczikk1
http://blog.clssy.com/post/39001607251/the-freelance-professors-are-coming

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kenko
In the 19th century and before, this is actually, more or less, how professors
made their livings, at least in the German system. They were paid on an
individual basis by their students. Naturally, you had to teach classes that
lots of people wanted to take if you wanted to make any bucks (or Deutschmarks
or whatever). I don't think this is a system particularly worth returning to.

From the article, this pair of things is absolutely bats:

<em>“Most importantly, teacherpreneurship is not about promoting a free-market
vision for the profit of a few—but rather how our society can invest
substantially in teachers who can expertly serve millions of children and
families who are not in the position to choose a better school somewhere else
or find the most erudite online teacher anytime, anywhere. Teacherpreneurship
is all about the public good, not private gain.” (15 October, 2010)

Freelance teachers can cut out the middle man by gaining their own client
base, choosing how much they wish to charge and by having more freedom in
choosing their most effective teaching methodology.</em>

Right, and where would these teacher-entrepreneurs (if anyone actually says
"teacherpreneurs" I hope to god their jaw rots off) choose, predominantly, to
peddle their wares? I'm going to go ahead and guess that it's in the areas
where people <em>are</em> in a position to "choose a better school somewhere
else", because that's where the money is. They will, probably, set their wages
and gain their own client base in places where they can be assured of clients
who want to pay (people beset by class anxiety or who want to ensure that
their kids go to the right college (or are taught be the right freelance prof
---this scheme could not possibly work if there weren't gradations of status
on which to judge people; that's a large part of the role the contemporary
college plays)) and who can pay.

Keathley's wonderment regarding the possibility of "earn[ing] annual incomes
in the six-figure range instead of the average contingent faculty rate" is
also kind of strange; that's already possible---just not for contingent
faculty.

------
csense
Thanks to the Internet, it seems like it won't be impossible for one teacher
to both reach tens or hundreds of thousands of students, _and_ effectively
evaluate them.

Economically speaking, replacing a horde of mediocre professors with a few
superstar professors and a horde of really cheap machines will save a _ton_ of
money. Some of the savings will likely go into inflating the salaries of said
professors to the levels of other in-demand entertainers like professional
athletes or movie stars.

But much of the benefits will be reaped by a much larger section of society:
Lower -- and more accessible -- tuition for students (and others who help fund
education like grants, scholarships and parents).

Some of the displaced professors whose teaching abilities don't rise to
"superstar" level will inevitably face employment turmoil in the near term as
the industry consolidates, but in the long term will likely find their talents
redeployed to other tasks like research, tutoring or private-sector work.

------
joe_the_user
_Three weeks ago we blogged about sessional teachers, the often underpaid,
overworked “Roads Scholars” who teach individual classes (sometimes through
multiple universities). Most of them hope to accumulate enough teaching
experience to become tenured at a university. Some critics condemn the way
they are used and how little they are paid._

This phrasing seems a little deceptive. Certainly, most lecturers would hope
to become tenured but in the way most fast food workers would hope to win the
lottery. Lecturers teach _the majority_ of classes in the modern university
and effectively have no chance of becoming tenured. It's not even that new a
situation but it has worsened over time.

Further, I'm sure how much "breakout" is possible through the web. Considering
the web gives a potential student much wider options, it is hard to see it as
a way for teachers to attain a high wage in the long run even if the "middle
man" is cut out.

~~~
kenko
Seriously, no one becomes tenured at a university by teaching a lot of
classes. Not only is that not the "track" to become tenured (the way to do
that is to get a tenure-track gig, see how that works?), it will likely
detract from your chances because:

1\. the longer you do it the more tarnished you'll become; 2\. the more you
rack up teaching gig after teaching gig, the harder it is to establish a
research record, for various reasons: if you're adjuncting, it takes tons of
time; if you aren't (if you have lots of visiting assistant professorships,
for instance) you still potentially have to deal with annual moves, lots of
class prep (you won't have much say over what you teach so you won't
necessarily get to repeat classes), and less institutional support than your
tenure-track colleagues.

I sincerely hope none of the people who were blogged about actually harbors
the hope attributed to them, because if they do they were badly misinformed.

------
cafard
They're here, they're called adjuncts.

------
cmccabe
Universities combine together some socially useful functions (performing blue-
sky research, creating an informed populace) with some profitable functions
(teaching vocational skills to young people, giving potential employers a way
to filter the pool of applicants via credentials.) It may be that one day
someone will figure out how to do the profitable things without doing the
things that help society, which would be unfortunate. This is rather like how
newspapers are suffering because the internet decoupled the profitable thing
(advertising) from actually doing original journalism.

