Academia, Religion

Duquesne University Professor Dies In Abject Poverty

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

250px-Holy_Ghost_Fathers_sealMargaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 83. Adjunct professors at Duquesne make between $3000 and $3500 per semester per course. In the best of times, Margaret Mary, teaching three course, wasn’t even clearing $25,000 a year with no benefits and no job security. After Duquesne reduced her to one course, Margaret Mary couldn’t afford to pay the electricity bill and her home became uninhabitable in the winter.

Ironically, Duquesne’s president, Charles J. Dougherty, is a nationally recognized scholar and expert in health care ethics. Since Margaret Mary didn’t have health care, I guess there was no health care ethics involved. Duquesne’s president makes over $700,000 a year with full benefits.

In 2005, adjunct professors make up about 48% of the faculty at colleges and universities. Today, that number is 75% as universities cut costs by reducing the number of more expensive tenured professors. The cost savings are not passed along to students. Duquesne, a private university, has increased tuition an average of 5.4% per year between 2006 and 2010. Higher tuition and lower costs via less qualified professors, the best of both worlds, for the universities.

A majority of the 130 adjunct faculty at Duquesne decided to organize as a chapter of the United Steelworkers and submitted a petition for an election to the National Labor Relations Board. Duquesne hired a Memphis lawyer known for his counseling organizations on how to remain union free. Duquesne filed a motion that since it was a “church-operated school,” it was exempt from NLRB jurisdiction. The motion was denied.

Although Duquesne was founded by, and is sponsored by, members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, it does not depend financially on the Catholic Church, does not require its faculty members to be Catholic, and does not require its student to study Catholicism.

As universities focus on increasing their endowments through cost cutting measures like hiring more adjunct professors, they lose sight of their raison d’être, to provide a quality education for their students.

Only a small part of the U.S. News & World Report rankings are based on the percentage of faculty who are full time. Even this small part is being gamed by the universities. The University of Nebraska interpreted the U.S. News question on the percentage of full time faculty to cover only those faculty who are tenured or on a tenure track and not to cover adjunct faculty. While U.S. News has since detailed that adjuncts should be counted, the low contribution to a school’s ranking, just 5%, is obscene.

The Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice has declared that “Union busting is a mortal sin.” Georgetown University, one of two Catholic universities to make the U.S. News top 25, just recognized its adjunct professors’ union, citing the Catholic Church’s social justice teachings.

H/T: Daniel Kovalik, Austin Cline, Mark Oppenheimer, Claudio Sanchez, Scott Jaschik, Moshe Z. Marvit.

885 thoughts on “Duquesne University Professor Dies In Abject Poverty”

  1. Conservatives need to return to this planet. Unless we adopt a policy permitting the uninsured or those without other adequate means to die untreated (a position that was actually expressed at several town hall meetings), we need a method for covering that cost. Many of us pay many thousands of dollars a year in premiums for coverage, and part of that premium cost covers treatment for the uninsured. The ACA is the first serious piece of legislation to attack that problem. Much of the opposition is irrational blather; no sensible alternative has been proposed by anyone. Republicans have been unable to secure repeal through the legislative process or through judicial review. In a constitutional republic, that means that the opposition must now work in good faith to implement the law and propose legislative fixes as experience determines necessary. What Boehner, Cruz and the Tea Party are doing is nothing more than tyranny by the minority. It should not be dignified by treating it as a proper use of political power. Nor should the administration entertain any notion of compromise. Enough is enough.

  2. raff,
    No, I have not seen Restrepro. I don’t keep up with movies much any more. I can’t even remember the last time I went to a movie theater. Vicarious adventure never appealed to me for some reason. A detective once told me I notice way too much stuff, that my sense of detail kept me from liking movies. I suppose that’s true, and why I do like documentaries. I watched Poster Girl on Netflix. It has left me with a mood I cannot seem to shake.

    Robert Burns’ lyrics for his song Killecrankie have been running through my head. The first verse is a question followed by the response.

    Whaur hae ye been sae braw lad?
    Whaur hae ye been sae brankie-o?
    Whaur hae ye been sae braw lad?
    Cam’ ye by Killiecrankie-o?

    And ye had been whaur I hae been
    Ye wadna been sae cantie-o
    And ye had seen what I hae seen
    On the braes o’ Killiecrankie-o

    This is the English translation:

    Where have you been so fine, lad?
    Where have you been so spruce, O?
    Where have you been so fine, lad?
    Came you by Killiecrankie, O?’

    If you had been where I have been,
    You would not have been so jolly, O!
    If you had seen what I have seen
    On the hill sides of Killiecrankie, O!

    Robert Burns understood PTSD.

  3. What Bob K. said about the ACA. Usually when a law passes and the courts have accepted it, it goes into effect. Why is this one any different?

  4. OS,
    The Hurt Locker was pretty intense. Did you see Restrepo? It was another intense one, but real life.

  5. I have no idea who Oldman is. I almost never watch a movie unless it is a documentary. I do watch an aviation or military flick once in a while, but often those are painful to watch as well because most of them make such awful factual and visual mistakes.

    The last movie I watched was The Hurt Locker. I liked that because it was well done, and I understood the lead character and his motives all too well.

  6. Don’t want the Affordable Care Act?
    Too bad. My heart bleeds for you.

    You should have said something while it was being argued over between Obama and the corporate representatives (Congress).

    The people of this country indicated to their Congressional representatives that they wanted some changes in medical care. This is a republic, remember?

    The ACA was passed, Obama signed it, and the Supreme Coup said it was Constitutional.
    That means the ACA is law, now. Polls, and all the whining, don’t change that.

    Too poor to pay for medical insurance? The gummint will help you pay for it.

    Libertarian? Too greedy, and anti-social, to want to pay for it?
    Too bad. My heart bleeds for you. You live in a society. You couldn’t live for a minute, without this society. Suck it up.

  7. Bron sez on 2013/10/03 at 10:25 pm

    Health Care Law
    50% Oppose Health Care Law’s Individual Mandate, 36% Favor

    ***********************************

    Regarding the mandate to have health insurance, I have a few questions.

    Do you think people should be able to drive without insurance?

    How does one plan not to have any serious medical conditions for a year?

    What do we do with someone who doesn’t have insurance? Make them buy it, treat them for free in emergency rooms, or leave them on the street to die?

    My son is the medical director of an emergency department. The thing that makes staff crazy is the patients who come in on a busy Saturday night when the place is a madhouse. It goes like this:

    Dr. “How long have you had this cough and fever?”

    Pt. “Since last Monday.”

    Dr. “Why are you just now coming in, and why didn’t you go to your regular doctor?”

    Pt. “They said on the TV to come to the emergency room if you are sick.”

    If it were just one or two patients like that, it would be acceptable and manageable. However, when there is a line waiting to see the doctor or nurse practitioner, and at the same time exam rooms are full with two heart attacks, one stroke, a diabetic crisis, a gunshot wound, one knife wound, and a couple of near-fatal auto crash victims coming in by helicopter, it is not the time to tell the doctor their Congressman told them to come to the ER.

  8. Bron,
    Look at what the CNBC polls showed. People have been kept confused and in the dark by a systematic program of disinformation sponsored by a handful of obscenely wealthy oligarchs like the Koch crime family, Art Pope, Rupert Murdock, and their minions.

    All that is going to be a fading memory soon as more and more people sign up. However, half the governors are in the thrall of the oligarchs, and are doing their damnedest to keep their own constituents from having health care insurance for the first time.

    As I wrote my Congressman yesterday, its over. ACA is a done deal, so give it up. It is now law, being implemented as I write this and if repealed, what do all those Repub congresscritters tell the tens, or hundreds of thousands who have already signed up for health insurance?

    As I said before, we are at the point where people will start breaking out the pitchforks and torches.

  11. Bron,
    Suggest that when you post a poll, you put the date on it. That poll was taken in March 2010, more than three years ago.

    Polls show that if asked about “Obamacare” 47% opposed it. However, if asked about the Affordable Care Act, opposition dropped to 37%.

    30% of respondents had no idea what the Affordable Care Act is, while 12% did not know what Obamacare is.

    This is from a CNBC sponsored poll taken a week ago. It is clear that Republicans have been at least partially successful in muddying the waters instead of informing. Republican governors have taken the lead in trying to sabotage implementation of the ACA, using stunts ranging from requiring twice as much training for navigators (TX), intrusive background checks (TN), and ordering state employees to refuse to help people get information about it (GA).

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101064954

  19. Seeing as how Kentucky is a state with a large number of poor, disabled and elderly, I am eager to see how Rand Paul and Box Turtle McConnell explain it when the checks don’t come.

    It will be pitchforks and torches time.

  20. My wife starts getting SS this month. You folks worry too much. Or maybe you’re hoping it will happen?? It won’t. I got a C-note, any takers.

    1. Nick, When you are living 100%+ under the poverty line and ss or ssd is your only source of income it behooves you to worry. An Alfred E. Neumann smile won’t keep the oil bill paid, food in your refrigerator, your medications paid for.

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