Faculty at all 23 campuses of the California State University system have voted to authorize a strike, demanding a new contract with higher salaries, lower class sizes and more manageable workloads.
I just started a college class after a 20 year break. It’s an online, asynchronous, class so the only “interaction” from the teacher is that she made a youtube video for each chapter that I can watch. The videos are terrible and were obviously made in 2016 and from the phrasing she uses, it’s clear that these videos are used for course at several colleges in the area. The teacher doesn’t have office hours and said we can only ask her questions via text.
How much should one earn for teaching a class in 2023 by playing videos from 2016? She even monetizes her YouTube channel and makes us sit through ads. We use an integrated online textbook that handles all the homework and testing and automatically calculates grades. Her job is more like collecting residuals than a real job. Shes not really putting out new efforts and she could easily be working another full time job at the same time. I’m pretty shocked to see what the college experience has become.
Not sure if you did the math on my figure but even at 15 units, it’s $31k per year. You want to learn something from somebody with a lot of education and experience, you need pay them fairly for their time. If the job paid well, you’d get a larger pool of qualified and passionate instructors. It’s hard to be passionate about teaching students who don’t want to be there, who are all paying way too much for tuition, while being paid a poverty wage.
I’ve been on both sides of the classroom in the past 10 years. I have a full time job that makes $130k. I think $8 to $9k for teaching a 3-unit course would be a fair wage. Roughly triple the current rate.
Also worth noting my number is for a part time lecturer. These are mostly working professionals and retired professors. They are not represented by the College Faculty Assn. However, they do represent a significant portion of instruction at CSU, and they do displace/diminish bargaining power of higher wage workers in CFA.
To be fair, creating online modalities while keeping students engaged and active is HARD. Yes, those videos should be updated (and maybe not monetized but… that extra cash might be nice) but it otherwise sounds like a streamlined course.
I think the online courses either have to be all asynchronous or all synchronous, with no hybridity in between. And its all so hard to create and plan while keeping in mind the attention span of an 18 year old in 2023.
A part-time lecturer makes $3100 for a 3-unit class for the semester. Basically volunteering.
(I’m very pro union but…)
I just started a college class after a 20 year break. It’s an online, asynchronous, class so the only “interaction” from the teacher is that she made a youtube video for each chapter that I can watch. The videos are terrible and were obviously made in 2016 and from the phrasing she uses, it’s clear that these videos are used for course at several colleges in the area. The teacher doesn’t have office hours and said we can only ask her questions via text.
How much should one earn for teaching a class in 2023 by playing videos from 2016? She even monetizes her YouTube channel and makes us sit through ads. We use an integrated online textbook that handles all the homework and testing and automatically calculates grades. Her job is more like collecting residuals than a real job. Shes not really putting out new efforts and she could easily be working another full time job at the same time. I’m pretty shocked to see what the college experience has become.
Not sure if you did the math on my figure but even at 15 units, it’s $31k per year. You want to learn something from somebody with a lot of education and experience, you need pay them fairly for their time. If the job paid well, you’d get a larger pool of qualified and passionate instructors. It’s hard to be passionate about teaching students who don’t want to be there, who are all paying way too much for tuition, while being paid a poverty wage.
I’ve been on both sides of the classroom in the past 10 years. I have a full time job that makes $130k. I think $8 to $9k for teaching a 3-unit course would be a fair wage. Roughly triple the current rate.
Also worth noting my number is for a part time lecturer. These are mostly working professionals and retired professors. They are not represented by the College Faculty Assn. However, they do represent a significant portion of instruction at CSU, and they do displace/diminish bargaining power of higher wage workers in CFA.
That’s a separate issue from pay scales. Quality of the courseware should be enforced by the institution regardless of pay rates.
But I am also curious, which campus is this?
UC San Diego.
That’s definitely not most of the lecturers though, especially since classes are mostly back to in person
To be fair, creating online modalities while keeping students engaged and active is HARD. Yes, those videos should be updated (and maybe not monetized but… that extra cash might be nice) but it otherwise sounds like a streamlined course. I think the online courses either have to be all asynchronous or all synchronous, with no hybridity in between. And its all so hard to create and plan while keeping in mind the attention span of an 18 year old in 2023.