Mike has a good point but I don't know what can be done about it.  These
changes in summer school pay practices also delay pay for summer school
until the end of the month.  For some summer terms this doesn't amount to
much, a few days.  But for the last summer terms it amounts to two or three
weeks.  Now I can certainly wait for my pay, I have little choice, but it
is a bother and I'd guess the delay generates additional income for the
university.

--Gene

At 02:14 PM 7/2/03 -0400, James Russell wrote:
>I taught first summer a.m. term and was surprised when I was finally
>paid for my work that the money was roughly $400 less than I
>expected.  I haven't taught summer school in three years.  Since that
>time, the system has adopted a new accounting practice that accounts
>for the loss of summer school income to faculty.
>
>What they do now that they didn't do three years ago was lump
>together the summer school pay with regular monthly income.  I have
>TIAA disability insurance; the cost of that insurance compared to the
>regular monthly cost roughly doubled--even though I am sure that if I
>were to become disabled I would get no extra disability pay.
>Otherwise, I might pay someone to maim me so that I could live off
>the princely sum I would receive on disability income.  When I taught
>summer school in 2,000, there was no payroll deduction for disability
>insurance.
>
>The deductions for withholding, FICA, and medicare were respectively
>2.6, 2.15, and 2.14 times the regular monthly amounts.  What has
>happened, of course, is that I have been moved temporarily into a
>much higher tax bracket.  Granted, I will get back some of the
>withholding money next year when I file my tax return (without any
>interest on the money that the IRS has had in its hands all that
>time).  But I won't get anything back on the higher FICA and medicare
>payments.  Granted, also, I would have paid something into all three
>tax categories no matter how I was compensated.  But not that much.
>
>The solution that would help faculty with this problem would be to
>return to past accounting practices.  From 1970 (when I came to UTC)
>until the very recent past, summer school pay was always delivered in
>a separate check apart from regular monthly income.  They still do
>that with our longevity pay.  I don't see why they can't revert to
>the earlier procedure when it comes to summer school pay.  It can't
>cost all that much to cut the extra checks.  Summer school income has
>always been a way for senior faculty to compensate for the abysmal
>salary compression problem at UTC.  For the sake of faculty morale,
>it would be good policy for senior administrators to keep that in
>mind.
>
>Mike Russell

Eugene Bartoo
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
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