Income-ing

[Steelhead]

>Steely you rascal. When you give out "facts" that you would take
>apart if someone else were to produce such insubstantial
>substantiation, do you know what you are doing?

No, I don't. Like Gaddis, I'm into the pre-Socratics, such as Heraclitus,
Henry. Never took that Know Thyself crap seriously.

>Sometimes I will
>argue a point with my 12-year old and when I drop in a "fact" cause
>it sounds good even if it's irrelevant, I know what I'm doing and so
>does she and calls me on it. And then I admit it - yes, I was full of
>it. How about you, Steely?

Not yet.

>Take for instance that average salary. That's an average that
>includes professors that have spent a lifetime teaching teaching
>people who then get out of college and earn twice that much their
>first year in business.

Now that I re-read the article, the $48,000 is the "average" of first year
tenured professors, not of all professors. And that's for only 8 months
work! The average pay for a full-time freelance writer in this country
is--by comparison--less than $16,000, based on information in the
Statistical Abstract of the United States.

>As for your quote from  Nicholas Von Hoffman - I see no indication
>where the tuition increases are going. Could it be that the much
>needed "repairs to infrastructure" that have sat on the back-burner
>for years are being partly paid for by the actual consumers of
>education, the students? Your quote does nothing to support your
>contention that academia is a get rich quick scheme.

I didn't say it was a "get rich scheme."

Do I think college professors are overpaid? Tough question.

I'd tend to say yes, particularly in relation to the much more difficult
and important jobs of the primary school teacher or librarian. But they are
also overpaid in two other important regards: in relation to the quality of
their work (ie., salaries rise at the same time the basic intellectual
skills of the American student is in a state of free-fall) and, second,
their relatively high rate of pay tends to desensitize them to the
deteriorating social circumstances of the country (note recent remarks the
on citizenry and environs of North Texas.)

By the way, I also believe that mainstream journalists are way overpaid,
which is one of the reasons you see so little criticism of things like the
capital gains tax cut in the corporate media. Those reporters that used to
make $15,000 to $20,000 a year are now making between $50,000 and $80,000
and spend time each morning anxiously monitoring their own stock and mutual
fund portfolios.

>As far as tenure goes, sure, other industries don't have it. But
>you'll be happy to note that it's rapidly disappearing, and with it
>go teachers that have views that aren't mainstream. Oh, well. No
>great loss to us blue-collar types, eh, Steely?

Tenure rewards incompetence more than it protects intellectual freedom. It
should go the way of NEA and NEH grants--why any artist would want to be
underwritten by the State is quite beyond me.

Steely