Teaching for a Living -- Twenty-First Century Style

He goes in early to plan for the day. It is still dark, but at least it is quiet. While he used to have his own office, he now shares one with two colleagues. It's harder to focus on planning and grading when there are teachers and students crowded together discussing essays, grades, attendance, plagiarism, and conduct issues, but teachers deal with it.

There will be classes to run soon and the papers that go with them. And then meetings to review curriculum, re-format supervisory checklists, recruit faculty to serve on committees, assess the work of the past semester, get the annual performance review together. Time then to micromanage and plot performance of both graduate student teachers and students. Then there will be editing of submissions for the magazine and correspondence with both writers and other editors.

He has been at this for about 25 years and has not seen a salary increase, in real dollars, in that time. His work load has also increased from four classes per semester to five, with some service thrown in. It would have been slightly better, financially, and more secure, to teach high school than it was to come back to the university, but it seemed like a good career move at the time.

He was on a multi-year, renewable contract, but now he is on a year-to-year, re-apply contract, part of a growing workforce outside the tenure track. He does not belong to a union. He did belong to an "association" when he taught in the school district, but it did little to increase wages or improve working conditions in a "right to work" state.

He takes extra classes and works summers to make up the difference between increases of expenses and flat salary. There are occasional speaking and conference presentations for which he receives an honorarium.

The longer hours have helped, but he can only do so many.

Costs are up; income is flat; assets are already maxed out. 

Even with the longer hours and extra jobs, the rising cost of college has left him in the red. But he is lucky.

He has benefits that most can only dream of: good health insurance, some retirement contributions from his employer, long-term disability should he need it. Younger workers are not so lucky. Benefits like his are disappearing because costs have to be cut. Everywhere there is deficit. The younger faculty see this and hang on for a while as adjuncts before leaving to find something better paid.

Like others in the middle class, he has less and less purchasing power. He makes ends meet, usually, but that is about it. His children will graduate from college. He is lucky there too. Graduation rates of high schoolers have been flat and are dropping as funding for colleges goes down and tuition goes up, and up, hundreds of percent increases over the last 15 years.

His partner works too. That is a given these days.

He refinanced his house to help pay for college, a better car, and that medical emergency. But the value of the house went down and now he is under water.

Flat wages have led to longer hours, working partners, more debt.

Wages won't go up because no one lobbies for them or makes policy to support workers like him.

If middle class purchasing power goes down, businesses cut back. If businesses cut back, tax revenues go down. When tax revenues go down, education and infrastructure spending decreases. Students don't get as good an education and can't afford college. A less educated workforce means lower quality and decreased productivity. With lowered productivity and quality, capital goes global to make a better deal, get a bigger return.

It's a complex, vicious cycle, and he is caught in it. 

Wealth has been redirected to the top. The uber rich have had their way for the last three decades and have done very well while the middle class has been fleeced.

It's up to him and others like him to wake up, do their homework, and shape policies that will make working for a living worth the time they put into it.

The sun is coming up. It's time to meet that first class.