Thursday, February 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Backstory: Working for a living

By Michael Green

I love my job. And I am paid less than Richard Moore.

This week, the University and Community College System of Nevada released workload reports. All of us professor types fill them out so our leaders can figure out whether we actually work for a living. The answer is that we do.

Some work less than others. Moore, the former CCSN and Nevada State College president, earns $101,391 a year and is teaching 13 students in one class, or about $4,000 per student, a salary that even Barry Bonds might envy. He would have taught a second class, but too few students signed up. Technically, he and his NSC colleagues should teach four classes, but they are teaching half-loads while they develop the curriculum and build a school.

To criticize Moore in this situation isn't exactly fair. Granted, he misused so much public money during his tenure as president that he ought to have the decency to give some of it back now. But let's face a reality of human nature: Few among us, when overpaid, would return it. We just have to live with the Board of Regents and Henderson leaders having made possible this continued plundering of public money, and we can defeat them for re-election or torpedo their gubernatorial aspirations later.

Far more interesting, at least to this feeder at the public trough, is the report that UNLV professors work at least 55 hours a week and CCSN professors about 61. Also, the average CCSN professor took on just more than 100 students last fall while UNLV instructors tackled 69.

System officials pointed out professors do more than just stroll into the classroom and teach. We grade papers, plan lectures, serve on committees, advise students and do sundry other things. Some do research. All have to keep current on their subject, which means reading. Board Chairman Doug Seastrand, making vastly more sense than usual, said if we were on a time clock, the effect of overtime on the budget would be awful.

This is nice to see and hear. The occasional neanderthal argues that if a UNLV professor teaches three classes a semester, that professor works only nine hours a week; the comparable numbers at CCSN would be 15 hours a week.

I teach five classes with an enrollment of about 170, and I think about my classes and my work, on average, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some may question that. If you don't see sweat, it may be hard to believe work is taking place. Others may question extracurricular activities. I figured out that I serve on two boards, edit the book review section of one journal, evaluate manuscripts for another and for university presses, write columns for three different publications, am waiting to proofread one book, am close to finishing two others and have about half a dozen others I hope to write. I deliver probably an average of two or three talks a month to local groups about history and use less antacid than I probably need.

Is all of that part of teaching? Yes, including antacid. All of us are part of the community and should participate in it. I hope I help the college become known to certain groups that otherwise might be less familiar with it. And research is essential to teaching. Even if we at CCSN are not rewarded for it financially, many of us do it because it enables us to do a better job of conveying our subject to our students.

That even includes this column. Many students cringe at the thought of a history class, for many reasons. One is they see no connection between past and present. That's ridiculous, of course; if you are studying to be a nurse or a mechanic, one of the things you need to learn about your patient or your car is its history. But if I have to try to make sense of current events for you--insert your own punch line--it helps me do so with my students.

Nearly two decades ago, when the newspaper where I worked had gone down for the count and I was thinking of turning my history major into a career, one of my UNLV history professors, Andy Fry, put it perfectly: "It's a great job. We're paid to read and think, and to talk about it and write about it."

Fry still does it, and I am happy to be doing it, too. Not that it's all beer and skittles. Committee meetings violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So do some of the essays our students write. It also can be cruel to read what some of our colleagues write. Some scholars believe the quickest way to publication and renown is by assaulting the English language rather than embracing it.

But the complaints don't diminish the sheer joy of talking, reading and writing about what interests you, and the even greater joy of finding that those with whom you are studying it are interested in it, too. The better educated our society is, the better our society is likely to be. Not to be too highfalutin about it, but we professors contribute to that. We are public servants.

And with one exception, locally, we do it for a lot less than $4,000 per student.