I am your child’s college professor. Not literally, of course. But at least 60% of the time a college student is taught by someone like myself. I get paid by the class, with no benefits, to the tune of anywhere between $2,000 – $3,000 per class. Sounds like a lot? Fifteen weeks of class, at say, my top pay of $3,000, so to get the math easy I can get $200 each week for a 3 1/2 hour class. $57 per teaching hour, your say? Not bad?
But that’s if you sit on your ass and do nothing the rest of the week. That hourly rate doesn’t include a few hours of prep work each week, grading papers, creating exams, attending a few meetings with students. Add in another 3 1/2 hours per week. Which means my hourly rate jumps down to less than $30 per hour. So after all the taxes I take home less than $20 per hour.
Now think of it this way. I teach about ten classes a year (double the normal load for tenured professors earning four times my salary) and I earn less than $25,000 per year.
Yup. You’re right. IT SUCKS!
Why write this blog? Partially to bitch off. Okay. But also, to let the world know — especially that ever growing world of parents paying upwards of $45,000 per college — that their child’s teacher is probably earning less than what they hope their kid will earn his/her first year out of college.
Pathetic.
So why do I do it?
Sadly, because I love teaching.
