University Housing is organizing Unpack the Quack, a volunteer move-in assistance and welcome program for residence hall students and their families. On September 26, 2013, volunteers will serve as UO ambassadors as they help students unload vehicles and move into their new campus home.
We want you and your organization to be a part of this valuable UO tradition!
Greeter responsibilities include:
• Welcome students to our community
• Serve as an informational resource about the UO to students and their families
• Be prepared to talk about your work with or connection to the UO; we’ll provide a name tag that shows your title and affiliation
And from the faculty union’s facebook page:
… creative and effective actions during Introduction week (and beyond) that are designed to inform parents and new students of the faculty’s steadfast support for the educational and research mission of the UO and the reasons why those parents may hear about escalating labor disputes on the campus during the fall term.
The union is also making a push to get faculty to show up for the Aug 29 bargaining session XXXVI, where they’ll present another counter to the administration’s economic proposals. Yeah, I know it’s summer and you’re probably not on the payroll, but the more faculty that show up, the more pressure on Gottfredson to rummage through VPFA Jamie Moffitt’s spare change drawer to see if there’s anything left over for the faculty, after her athletic subsidies.
I’m all for showing up on the 29th.
But…
At the drop of a hat, the athletic department will be out in force giving away free stuff to parents, which is what parents care about.
I vote for the strike.
Love to see the public opinion of professors making over 100k striking to get a raise. Not exactly struggling teachers making 30k a year. I doubt there is much sympathy.
Many UO full time faculty make less than $36K a year. Average for non-tenure track is $47K. For assistant tenure track it’s $74K. And we’re still the lowest in the AAU for associate and full professors.
President Gottfredson, on the other hand, makes $540K. For comparison the leader of UC-Berkeley makes $486K.
It sounds like Mr. Gleason or another Administrator above who has so much apparent disdain for faculty that he cannot see the glaring problems in salaries and compensation at UO – the $100k+ faculty are few and many are former or current Administrators. The reality on the ground is a faculty who have had benefits erode, pay fail to keep up with the cost of living, while workloads have increased and more and more instructional faculty making the bare minimum as adjuncts (by far the majority of teaching faculty) working in term to term contracts. Get a clue anonymous and check whose sympathies YOU defend – the top .1%? Certainly not middle class, highly trained professionals trying to avoid slipping further downward like so many others in this country. Defending the middle class is the right thing to do, not condemn them for holding the line.
And did you mention salary compression and gender inequities? All of this effects morale? Are ANY administrators listening or are they just in reactive and defensive mode, justifying their own privileges and hard line against faculty and staff?
I doubt many of the few professors who make over $100,000 support the union. They are former administrators or people who have gone along and got along, and will continue to do fine with future raises, regardless of current productivity. Some exceptions, of course.
Repeating the original responer’s point, but stated more bluntly, the public isn’t going to be sympathetic to whiny college professors. And no UOM, coming back with, “but Gottfredson makes 540k wah wah” doesn’t make your case any stronger.
Soliciting parents that are overburdened with tuition for support for prof raises is not brilliant, it’s utterly stupid.
Lets just strike.
Per this post: https://uomatters.com/2013/03/raises-by-department-and-rank-to-get-to.html
Assoc Professor Avg income UO: 77378.95
Asst Professor Avg Income UO: 67346.69
Full Professor Avg Income UO: 100778.40
Median Lane county HOUSEHOLD income: 42k (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/41/41039.html)
Median of State about 52k
Median of US about 50k (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/incpovhlth/2011/statemhi2_11.xls)
As the person said above, the public isn’t going to have much sympathy (see the following for an interesting although older read: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/21/public_college_faculty_fear_loss_of_public_support).
and no I’m not in administration. I do think education bloat admin, buildings, athletics, etc is one of the next US bubbles. The current system makes a college degree not worth as much 20 years ago (see this for an interesting read; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324874204578440901216478088.html)I’m curious to see if UO experiences that pop first.
That WSJ article is not well grounded in data. Here’s one that is:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/college-premium-better-pay-better-prospects/
Quoting:
I’ve written before about the growing wage premium for college degrees: how the wage gap between workers with a bachelor’s degree and workers with no more than a high school diploma has been growing over the years.
But that statistic captures only part of the income premium that people with a bachelor’s degree enjoy as a result of completing college.
As I report in an article in Wednesday’s paper, people with college diplomas are much more likely to get jobs, period, than people without the credential. Part of college graduates’ income premium, then, comes from the fact that they are just more likely to be employed in a typical week. They are probably more likely to work the number of desired hours they wish to work, too, according to Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
You can see this in the unemployment numbers: The jobless rate for people with a bachelor’s degree was 3.7 percent in January, versus 8.1 percent for those with no more than a high school diploma.
Census estimates of median annual earnings help capture the college income premium. In 2011, the median male college graduate earned 1.95 times as much as the median male whose highest educational attainment was a high school diploma. In 1991, that ratio was 1.76. For women, the ratio is up, but not by as much: It was 2.03 in 2011 versus 1.99 in 1991, and it dipped in the intervening years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/calculating-the-net-worth-of-a-college-degree.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/student-loan-debt-college-tuition-_n_2838425.html
The point isn’t that the degree does’t earn you money. The point is that it a BA is the new high school diploma because everyone and their dog is getting them. Tech degrees seem to have the best ROI for students. This is the hay day of BA diploma mills…..
I hear there will be sign-up sheets outside of the library for the Aug 29th bargaining session if you want to sign up for Introducktion events (including unpack the quack): take a shift handing a welcome card to parents and new students explaining faculty commitment to the educational ambitions of their kids, and the UO Administration’s confusion with that focus – indicated by the highest student:faculty ratio in AAU, declining investment in enough faculty to cover their kids’ educational goals, bloated and growing Admin salaries, a million+ tuition dollars spent on fighting our faculty union, underinvesting in classrooms, faculty, etc. – why there will be labor disputes at the UO campus in the Fall and who to contact (probably the President’s Office?) to make sure their kids’ educational needs are prioritized…