-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Margaret 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.
Six of One – Obamacare vs. The Affordable Care Act
How A Rand Paul Republican From Alabama Learned To Love Obamacare
By Igor Volsky
October 4, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/04/2730801/joshua-pittman/
Excerpt:
Joshua Pittman is a 31-year-old self-employed videographer from Montgomery, Alabama. A libertarian Republican who voted for Ron Paul in 2012 and believes that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the future of the GOP, Pittman sees Barack Obama’s presidency as a “failure” who hasn’t lived up to the nation’s expectations.
But on Tuesday morning, Pittman logged on to HealthCare.gov and after some initial glitches and delays, successfully enrolled in a Bronze-level Obamacare health insurance plan. “It took me all day, really,” he says with a laugh. “It kicked me out and told me you have to try again, but I knew what I was getting into with so many people exploring it.”
Though he initially supported repealing the law, Pittman became curious about Obamacare in the days and weeks before it launched. For years, he had gone uninsured, thinking he’d be able to “get over anything with a bandaid and a six pack of beer.” But a lead poisoning incident earlier this year shook his confidence and bank account, leading him with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. “I was a healthy person and it really depleted me financially, so it made me look at things in a different way than I would before. I understood the importance of people being insured.”
“I’ve seen first hand people hitting up the emergency room for free health care and then putting a burden on [everyone else] and that’s not something I would want to do, I want to take personal responsibility … By no means am I trying to take a government handout…it’s not a free handout, you’re paying for this health care, but it’s making it more accessible to more people.”
Asked what he liked about Obamacare, Pittman highlighted its prohibition against denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, noting that he wouldn’t be able to find coverage without it, and said that the policies offered in the marketplace seemed more affordable and comprehensive than those available to him on the individual market. “You may pay $18 a month [for a cheaper plan] and you’re missing a level of coverage. It’s not as easy as you’re going to pay this much a month,” he says.
Small businesses are the best because they sink or swim quickly on how they produce. I have worked for the Federal and a County government. I have worked for a major corporation, mid sized biz, and ran my own small biz,
Bron,
“The system they work within is more often the problem. But large scale operations of any kind breed inefficiencies. I dont deny that large corporations are every bit as bad or worse. But they do have one difference, they do respond to consumer demand”
Actually, most of them don’t do a very good job of it. Some do, but many just do enough to retain a customer and people have become so accustomed to bad service that it often takes little to impress them. That phenomena also varies regionally. For example, you get generally crap service in the South, but better service in the Midwest. Part of that is a result of the general education level of the employment pool. There are businesses down here that have been here for decades that wouldn’t last six months in Kansas, Missouri or Illinois. Another driver is that customer service is a business expense, especially if your operation is of the scale to merit using a call center set-up. And in that never ending drive serving the bottom line, customer service is usually the last in line as a funding priority. Yeah, most businesses (especially big ones) do respond to customer demand, but only as much as they have to to make the sale or keep churn down to a minimum.
leej, I was saying that benefits will not be delayed, not that people aren’t dependent upon them. The media and government love to scare people. It serves their purposes. This is the 17 shutdown since 1977. Everyone just need to breeeeeathe, breeeeathe. That is one ALMOST EVERY 2 YEARS. Has anyone starved, frozen or died because of then? “No Drama Obama” has turned our nation into a bunch of drama queens. I think Valerie Jarrett loves the soap operas.
http://news.yahoo.com/for-a-cancer-patient–the-government-shutdown-is-a-matter-of-life-or-death-211105936.html
Yep no damage to folk, I mean this person or the others haven’t died, yet, from the shutdown.
But there have been other casualties, as well. Rescue workers at Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument have scaled back the search for missing hiker Jo Elliott-Blakeslee after 16 of the park’s employees were furloughed. Because of shutdown rules that prohibit government employees from doing any kind of work while furloughed, even volunteering or checking their email, those people can’t help the ongoing search. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-some-shutdowns-impact-has-been-devastating/2013/10/02/f0ad8462-2b97-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html
But she hasn’t been found yet so her possible death from not being found in time doesn’t count too I guess.
Mike S.
“Where the problem came in was from political officials who hated Civil Service because they couldn’t use the jobs for political gain and cronyism.”
As a former Civil Service Commissioner I heartily seconded that fact with a resounding “You said a mouthful!!”
Mike A. et al,
Re the ACA:
Eniobob emailed me a link to a C-Span appearance today by Governor Steve Beshear (D-KY). The Governor explains how things are going in Kentucky with the ACA and answers questions posed by call-in viewers.
Eniobob introduced the matter to me with this phrase: “Felt good to hear some calm and reason.”
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/315422-6
It’s a long segment but definitely worth the time. (Keep in mind that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul are Kentucky’s US Senators.)
You could be right Lotta.
Bron,
You had two comments caught in the spam filter that looked identical. I pulled out the most recent one for you.
Doing the Math: Student Loan Debt and the Adjunct Equation
Thursday, 26 September 2013 1
By Nicole Braun, Classism Exposed | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/19076-doing-the-math-student-loan-debt-and-the-adjunct-equation
Excerpt:
One of my friends calls working in higher education a “Ponzi Scheme.”
This is how it works:
You put years of your life on a shelf in the name of higher education. You work hard, delay gratification and play the game to obtain the advanced degree. Unless you have wealthy parents, you take out student loans which you plan to pay back after landing the dream job as a full time tenured track professor. But, these days, full time jobs are few and far between. The university is no different than other corporations: full time, tenured track positions with benefits have been eradicated around the country and chopped up into part time work in the name of profit even if the university professes to be “non-profit.”
For those of you who do not know, part time professors are called “adjunct professors.” After we receive our low paychecks, many adjuncts then turn the money earned from the education system to the Department of Education to pay a portion of our whopping student loan debt.
Like other corporations, the university system makes a killing off part time workers and in turn, we are in debt for life. We are indentured servants.
In self-help movements, it is said, “You are as sick as your secrets,” and it is academia’s dirty little secret that approximately 74% of college professors are adjunct professors. We are exploited and abused. We have no job security, no retirement, we usually do not have health insurance, we are paid low wages, we have no power individually, and we often have enormous student loan debt because we believed in the myth that obtaining an advanced degree would open up new doors to meaningful work and a good quality of life. That was the promise, and how it used to work. Now, contrary to popular belief, many professors live beneath the poverty line…
Indeed, this is academia’s dirty little secret, but talking about it “embarrasses” the university, and challenges many well socialized ideas we have about the role of the university as a benevolent institution invested in humanitarian ideals centered on critical thinking, equality, and justice. It deconstructs the idea that all professors live an upper middle class lifestyle. It also challenges the idea that investing in higher education “pays off.”
Some adjunct professors have been or are homeless. Some are ill but cannot afford to go to the doctor. Some of our children have suffered from living under years of economic stress, classism, and no real health care. Many adjuncts have worked hard for years, piecing together multiple classes in order to survive, hoping that one day we will get the dangling carrot: a full time, tenured track faculty position, doing work we love, and creating a better world for all. We often feel invisible, silenced, nameless, depressed, oppressed, and shamed that we cannot make it out of the adjunct cycle. We also love to teach, so we stay.
One of the colleges I work for asked me not to tell anyone how much we make as it is “embarrassing” and “unprofessional” to mention, even when I was teaching a course on social class inequality, and the issue fit in with the ideas in the reading materials. Students want to talk about “real life” social problems, and the adjunct problem is, after all, real life. This same college pays me $2,700 for the entire semester which involves 15 weeks of work. Yet, students are billed over $3,000 a class in tuition. So that means one student pays more in tuition than I receive for my total wage. Since most of the work I do is online, the college does not have to pay much overhead. I buy my own computer equipment; I pay all my own expenses. And in return, when I tell the truth, I am told that I can no longer speak about this topic as it is “embarrassing.” Let it be known that I am embarrassed to work for an institution that makes a sickening profit off of me while claiming to care about social justice and equality.
Mike Spindell:
Not all are bad, I know many who work very hard and do a good job. The system they work within is more often the problem. But large scale operations of any kind breed inefficiencies. I dont deny that large corporations are every bit as bad or worse. But they do have one difference, they do respond to consumer demand; I have called large corporations and they do respond. But then I have had very pleasant dealings with the IRS when I have had a problem with taxes too. In fact they were easier to deal with than my former accountant.
So you are right, I should have stated it more along the lines of “large organizations have built-in inefficiencies which may affect quality of service.”
I truly did not mean to imply that civil servants were inept. I was painting with too broad brush, my apologies.
“I truly did not mean to imply that civil servants were inept. I was painting with too broad brush, my apologies.”
Bron,
That clarifies where you are coming from and we do have much we agree on.
Bureaucracy run in a certain way whether private or public are inefficient. The certain way being “top down” management and executive positions awarded not on the basis of merit, but on sinecure and nepotism. The agency I worked in was structured on a military model and the position rose too was roughly equivalent to the lowest level Colonel working out of the Pentagon. While I interacted with the top generals (commissioners) it was because I was the one doing most of the work, either personally or through delegation. The problems I encountered almost always derived from orders given by someone with authority that came from ignorance or ego. since I’m also a student of human nature I understand that this too is how the corporate structure works. The greatest challenge someone trying to create and organization faces is in developing a structure that gets feedback from all levels within it. Without the feedback it is running blind.
A case in point again is the late, unlamented Circuit City. As a cost cutting measure it got rid of its most experienced sales/technicians and that led to its failure. Were there a management in place that actually understood what the lower levels were doing the firing decision would never have happened. When I worked I was a supervisor, then manager of people for more than twenty five years before I retired. I had authority of up to 300 people at different times and at other I ran the administration of a large agency. I had very little problem getting people to do their jobs well. My biggest problems came from my bosses who never bothered to understand the work they overlooked. for years I has a quote framed in my office from a Roman General from 2,000 or so years ago. I’ve lost it and the citation but here is a decent paraphrase:
“Every time we had the troops in order and everyone understanding our mission, someone on top would order a reorganization and we would have to start over again”.
I quit Child Welfare at the point when I delivered to them a reorganization plan for all of the Agencies investigative Field Offices. I was their expert on field services. They took most of the reorganization plan but inserted a level of management to be made up of political appointees. I protested and was basically told I’d of course go along with their plan in the interest of my career. The level of management was inserted at the Mayor’s directive to give him 120 well paid political payoff jobs. The Mayor was Democrat Ed Koch. The heads of my Agency didn’t protest the plan because it meant raises for all of them. After they told me to go along I took a lateral transfer to another Agency and was gone within two weeks. Child Welfare was to serious a mission to me to play games with its operations.
“Could run rings around ANY corporate types”..ANY? I have worked all spheres, and that ANY went way past credulity. If you used SOME, you would have had some credibility w/ that statement.
And, this major piece of legislation was passed via RECONCILIATION, which was horseshit X 50.
raff, The executive branch has unilaterally and unconstitutionally made significant changes since the law was passed.
My medical plan IS protected. It’s called Medicare.
I hope it works out like you think it will. I can honestly say I like the coverage of children until 26 and the no worries about pre-existing conditions.
Why do I pay 3000/year for 4 cars but 14,000 for 4 people? I am curious what the payout per year for autos are vs. humans.
It is too bad the insurance companies and doctors didnt address this years ago when they took the purse strings away from the consumer. When someone else is paying, the sky is the limit. Doctors used insurance to line their pockets in defiance of market controls.
We could have covered those additional people without this. I hope you all object to being made to eat your greens and stay away from sugar as much as you are against government spying.
Government gets much wrong, I dont know why you think this will different?
Cesspool of bureaucratic ineptitude comes readily to mind.
“Cesspool of bureaucratic ineptitude comes readily to mind.”
Bron,
I was a career bureaucrat and I and my co-workers could run rings around any corporate types you might care to come up with when it came to work product and efficiency. Where the problem came in was from political officials who hated Civil Service because they couldn’t use the jobs for political gain and cronyism.
What Mike A. and OS said, without reservation.
Mike A, well said. The sad fact is though the tyranny of the minority has been working. When the president starts talking about a grand bargain that has things in it like ‘chained CPI’, offering budget deals that are all but the same as the opposition budget (Ryan budget) and it takes years to fill routine appointments it’s pretty clear that the minority is successful.
Mike,
Exactly. Part of what is going on is the last gasps of one of the least productive industries in the world: health insurance. They produce nothing, but take much. Their whole purpose of existence is to make money and lots of it. In order to do that they must deny as many claims as possible.
They are desperate, but have enough money to buy as many politicians as possible. When they buy a politician they expect that politician to stay bought. No health insurance company ever cured anything. They are leeches on the economy and on their own clients and the client’s doctors.
rafflaw: “….Usually when a law passes and the courts have accepted it, it goes into effect. Why is this one any different?”
*
’cause it’s got that black guy’s cooties all over it perhaps?