The relative pay of high school teachers has been debated in opinion columns, at legislative assemblies and around the dinner table for years. What is widely understood is that for the educational attainment necessary to hold the job and unique stresses of it, teachers make very little money. Now nationwide, their benefits, pay and job security are being rolled back.
What is less widely known, but at least equally disturbing, is the plight of the adjunct professor. Nationwide, an increasing amount of teaching work is being done by part-time, untenured instructors, many of whom have terminal degrees. At USC, adjuncts can teach up to four classes a semester for a $4,000 to $6,000 stipend per class. Effectively, the university could pay just $32,000 for eight classes taught over two semesters by an instructor with a PhD and student loans.
Defenders of the system will argue it’s just how the market is. If there are more people who want to teach than the education system can absorb, the market will dictate that salaries go increasingly further down. Virtually every major university uses the system, so it’s just not feasible to opt out.
We believe this attitude is disappointing and represents a severe devaluation of education at all levels by policymakers and administrators. To start with, the University of South Carolina now only gets approximately 10 percent of its budget from the state of South Carolina. By its allocation of funds, the state has declared that it cares little for the university bearing its name or higher education in general.
So while the university might be pressed financially, that does not excuse it from an obligation to properly fund education and pay those who provide that education a salary worthy of their contributions to campus and the future of the state.
That, fundamentally, is the core of the problem. The money funneled into education should not be judged by the cheapest way its components — teachers, supplies and buildings — can be obtained on the free market. Education is not an unfortunately necessary assembly line process where workers are disposable and interchangeable, but an investment in the future of humanity carried out by highly educated professionals. It is, quite frankly, time that policymakers and administrators started treating it as such.