At 12:26 AM 11/16/2004 -0500, Stuart Benkert wrote:
>Comment:
>This, in turn, would set a new, higher standard for salary among teaching
>faculty. By the time the rest of us are raised to that standard we should
>be sitting pretty.
>
>Response:
>Wrong. What are most of us teaching that can not be taught at a hundred
>other universities? I think I am a pretty good band director but there
>happen to be a lot of pretty good band directors out there. Certainly
>there are more band directors than "SIM" qualified researchers. Salaries
>are based on a type of intellectual market... if you have the same
>knowledge as a large number of other people... you don't get paid as much.
>Funny how that works. Guess what... when I want a raise... I will move...
>see... thats how they told us it works when I was in my doctoral seminar:
Your idea of how wages are determined, Stuart, seems to be a quaint version
of the fairy tale we tell about competitive markets. Unfortunately, it
isn't rarity of knowledge that determines price in any "type of
intellectual market"--that would imply a premium for arcaneness not unlike
prof. Stuart's basketball example, which, in fact, one place where there
IS a market determination of wage, although it's a monopsonistic market.
Your report of what you learned in your doctoral seminar is actually a
pretty fair description of reality:
>1. Bargain your best salary coming in because compression will kill you
>2. Renegotiate when you prove you can do something other than complain
>3. Use lateral moves between institutions to develop higher income
>4. Stay connected with your peers as they progress through the ranks and
>hit them up for higher paying jobs when they become department heads and deans
>5. Apply for gigs every two or three years to keep yourself fresh and see
>what the market requires
>6. If you get offerred a better job.... TAKE IT.
>
>Well, in retrospect, the above looks much like what people in "regular"
>jobs have to go through.
It isn't clear exactly what constitutes a "'regular' job" except perhaps
that you mean to contrast this category with 'academic jobs', the latter
being those that are not 'regular'. I note, however, that you use concepts
such as bargaining, negotiating, the implied threat of leaving, networking
with peers, and seeking favors from those with power. None of these have a
place in the fairy tale model of markets, and I don't see how it relates to
the ideas in the previous paragraph, especially your notion of an
"intellectual market".
>We special intellectuals ought not to be faced with such cold realities.
>We should get paid more just cause we have learnin. If we are going to
>start talking about fair salaries we should pay each person the same
>whether faculty or staff. Otherwise, you are just as guilty of submitting
>to the intellectual market as those you complain about. The philosopher in
>me sees the obvious conflation here folks so don't bother picking it
>apart. The case could be made though, and has been throughout history,
>that all tasks are equally important... it is simply a matter of timing
>and availability. For instance.... when you are being beaten to death in
>the parking lot... the hourly paid campus police officer might be more
>important to you at that moment than say... a salaried Chancellor or
>Provost (no offense guys... I am not slighting your ability to "open up a
>can" on someone). The importance and relative merit of the knowledge or
>ability is directly related to the proximity of the person possessing it
>to the person requiring it. Otherwise, it (salary) must be based on
>intellectual content (specific knowledge gained and based on levels of
>speciality which acquire additional merit and value through the limited
>number of individuals possessing said knowledge and the ease or difficulty
>with which this knowledge can be obtained or transferred). If not this...
>then what?
No, I wouldn't begin to try and pick this apart. Just two points,
though. First you appear to equate equity with equality, but then you both
posit that as a straw man to be debunked and as a core value that you
secretly and guiltily espouse. And second, the answer to your rhetorical
question, "then what?" was provided last term by the report from Prof
Provost and Prof Sompayrac on UTC salaries: one's prospects for career and
salary advancement at UTC depends primarily on who one has for an advocate
and how well placed that advocate is in the university. In other words,
Stuart, it isn't WHAT you know, but WHO you know. But, as you say, isn't
that how it works in the "real world"?
>Folks... I am not saying that we are all getting exactly what we deserve.
>I am saying that some of us are... some of us are getting more... some of
>us are getting less... and some of us are lucky to have a job. But... and
>here's what you're going to hate... the "SIMS" people are also being paid
>acccording to their field... some a little more... some a little less.
>There is a ray of hope for those of you still concerned over the income of
>others... you can go back to school and learn what they know... then you
>can make that kind of money too. Or you can struggle to make the argument
>that sectioned introductory courses offerred by some institutions via
>video and internet are just as marketable as these highly specialized
>engineering fields. This, however, like my younger daughter, simply
>doesn't hold water so bring a towel to clean up the mess.
All this is very interesting. People don't get paid "what they deserve,"
but they do get more or less what they deserve. This statement is hard to
evaluate without some way to determine what people deserve. Your idea that
by going to school and learning something people can make more money is
remarkably congruent with the THEC manifesto about "human capital" and the
"knowledge economy," which commented on recently in a "raven rant." I was
merely descriptive of the theory of human capital in my response to Prof.
McNair; I didn't express an opinion about it. I'll now do so by pointing
out that it is at the very least unscientific for two reasons. First, it
posits an essentially metaphysical entity that can never be
observed. Education is supposed to create this "thing" called human
capital, which enhances productivity, which leads to higher wages. But all
we can observe and measure are education and wage; the two middle stages
are unobserved. ONE alternative theory might say that education is a
screening mechanism that is more costly to acquire by those for whom
"productivity" is more difficult. In that case, we would observe the same
relationship between education and wages. And under EITHER theory,
employers could use education as an index of suitability for hiring. The
second reason it's unscientific is that the evidence for the theory is the
fact that people with more education have higher earnings, but higher
earnings are exactly what the theory is intended to explain. To my
thinking, this is circular.
Next, my point about certain professors teaching large sections of freshman
calculus was a response to suggestions by Prof Rice and Prof Hiestand about
alternative strategies open to UTC under the new THEC doctrine. It has
been suggested by some, including yourself, that to question program
decisions made by the administration is tantamount to wanting to reduce the
salaries of those professors and is motivated by jealousy or some other
base emotion. This is NOT the case, as I think you know. I, for one, have
said repeatedly that in the face of salary compression we should seek to
pull everyone UP to what I called high standard of compensation, and NOT to
pull anyone DOWN. Whiners like yourself have developed a line in response
to the non-existent complaint they imagine that goes along these lines:
"You may not like it, but you should accept these new higher paid
colleagues as just that--colleagues--and understand we're all in this
together." But Stuart, that is precisely the basis of my argument: we're
all in this together, and if THEC decides UTC must change its mission and
IF we accept that decision docilely and IF that forces UTC to drop an
expensive program that can't pay for itself, then we should expect all of
our colleagues to pitch in, and more importantly, we should help them find
a role in the new UTC under the THEC doctrine, because they do have tenure
and the present attack on tenure is the greatest threat to all of us.
I'm not sure how much you regard that as tortured logic or something
requiring a struggle to make or comprehend.
Finally, may I just add a comment about your most recent e'message in which
you suggest folks in the UTC community don't give to charity, ask darkly
what they've done to make society better, and berate them for "attacking
others on this campus instead of getting of your butts and taking the fight
to the people"?
In my experience, folks at UTC are in fact very generous and giving
people. Maybe not in ways that are always visible (we aren't Pharisees),
but I think if you make careful inquiries and look carefully you'll find a
lot. In a city like Chattanooga a great deal is done through churches and
other religious channels. Similarly, I often share your frustration in
thinking students, professors and staff are apathetic and uninvolved, but
at moments of reflection I'd have to admit my frustration is at apathy
toward what you or I think is important. As for attacking others, I would
take exception in one sense: I believe in questioning the arrogance of
power and authority, whether it originates in the government or the
workplace. If a provost or dean or department head acts in ways that
strike me as unjust, then, like the cowardly lion, I'm ready to walk up and
spit in his eye. But as I said to Larry Ettkin just yesterday, and to John
Friedl more than once, it's nothing personal--it's just business. I can
respect the person and criticize the office with spirit and vigor.
Some administrative decisions have done a lot to undermine employee morale
in recent years, IMHO, but I think some of your comments are a little too
rough on the good people of Chattanooga and UTC. I doubt you'd find folks
in the upper midwest to be much different. I remain,
your fellow pretentious raven ranter,
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