Monday, March 28, 2005
As you think of going to college within the next two years, many factors affect your decision. What you want to study, whether or not you want to go away or stay at home, and perhaps most importantly, what it's going to cost, are all big considerations. It's the cost-factor that invites college students everywhere to take a peak beneath the tuition bill. How is the money that I am paying in tuition and fees being spent? Specifically, are the people who work for the college I am going to attend/attending being paid fair wages?
For better or for worse, universities have become big business. Sadly, recent trends suggest that while administrators are being paid bigger salaries, professors, teachers and staff like janitors are often offered not only less than they deserve, but less than they can honestly live on, especially in big cities like Chicago, or college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan or Madison, Wisconsin that are more expensive than other towns their size precisely because of the presence of the university.
A college or university's biggest expense is going to be its salaries and the health care of its employees. Makes sense, no? A college or university isn't a collection of buildings, it's a community of people: teachers, students, support staff--theoretically learners all. One big way that universities skimp on salaries is this: instead of hiring a professor full time and putting her on what's called "the tenure track," the administration hires "adjunct faculty."
OK. Vocabulary lesson: "Tenure" is a status given to professors who've taught a certain number of years and distinguished themselves by their teaching and publishing in their field. It basically means that the professor has his or her job for life, barring some really major screw-up on the prof's part. It's important, because it means that professors who teach unpopular ideas do not get fired for it, or professors who specialize in something that may not seem important at the moment are allowed to continue in their work and not be eliminated because they teach too few students or teach in a field that does not bring in extra money to the university by way of government research grants. Tenured professors are usually paid pretty decent, too, with full medical benefits and the like.
This is why administrators don't like to have many tenured professors. They're expensive. So they hire "adjunct faculty." These are people who teach one or two classes, and are paid a flat fee, with no health insurance. This does work for some people, but as you probably know from working a part-time job while going to high school, sometimes something's gotta give. You either go to work and skip your homework, or do your homework and go to work dead tired, not always giving your job your full effort.
In addition to adjunct faculty, colleges use graduate teaching assistants, TAs. So when you are one of 357 kids in Professor Nucleus's Chem 101, there will be a small group of graduate chemistry students--working on their master's or doctor's degree--who will meet with you in smaller groups, answer your questions, teach small group lessons, and grade your papers. TAs are usually paid very low wages, and offered no health insurance. Yet in order to be a TA, they have to enroll in classes full time. Some of them are given free tuition (but they still have to eat!), but most are given a tuition reduction, meaning that they still have tuition to pay, as well as housing, food, and so on.
Then there are the janitors and security guards and food service workers and others who make college life possible. While they are sometimes offered health insurance, they are often paid less than what they would make in a comparable job working for a business other than higher education. There's still some sense in our society that things like education should not cost much money, that people should be willing to work for less because education is a noble cause. But is it okay that an NBA player or pop star makes zillions, while teachers get by on as little as we can pay them?
Jobs with Justice is a group trying to change all this. Recently, when graduate TAs tried to form a union to fight for better pay, big time universities like Yale and Harvard (neither of whom are poor, by the way) worked fervently to stop them.
Each year, Jobs with Justice organizes a National Student Labor Week of Action. This year, it's March 31-April 4. College kids around the country will work to find out how their school spends its money, and what help and support employees like TAs and janitors and guards and food service workers need. As the Jobs with Justice web page says,
"The rising cost of college tuition, federal and state financial aid cuts, and harsh anti-immigration policies have made it almost impossible for many students to attend college. And while the salaries of university administrators are on the rise, attacks on worker's rights, increasing pay cuts, lack of healthcare, unsafe and unsanitary working conditions and glass ceilings have made the campus workplace all but 'ivy league.' Sisters and brothers, it's time for us to take back our campuses! For these reasons and many more, students and workers will unite this spring to celebrate the Sixth Annual National Student Labor Week of Action. From March 31- April 4, 2005 we will commemorate the lives of Cesar Chavez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as we highlight the plight of campus workers nationwide." ( www.jwj.org/SLAP/A4/2005.htm )
Events in Chicago will take place at Loyola, Lake Forest and Northwestern Universities.
So what's this have to do with you, still in high school? E-mail this article to your friends in college. And when you get there, ask your TA how well he or she is paid, and whether or not the TAs can form a union. Speak out in support of that grandfather who sits in that guard booth, even if he yells at you for trying to park your car in an illegal spot. Say thanks to the woman who cleans your class or dorm room.
In fact, why wait? Find out if your high school janitor is making a fair salary, and if not, make some noise!
Catholic Connections
"The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions. This is a specific application of the more general right to associate. In the words of Pope John Paul II, 'The experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrial societies'."
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All , #104
Reflection Questions
Have you encountered people not earning a fair wage? You, your parents, your brother or sister... what was the circumstance, and what can be done about it?
Join us in to discuss these questions!
