Editor’s Note: Information in this article, originally published July 24, has been corrected. Professors’ base salaries cover their contractual responsibilities. This includes teaching, and professors do not receive additional pay for their research.
With all the talk of Mary Easley’s 88 percent pay increase, it would seem likely that people would raise a commotion over the salaries of other University employees.
The general public can easily access salary statistics for any full-time employee at a state-owned University. Earlier this year, The Charlotte Observer created a search database to make this information available to the public. This Web site caught my attention in class last week when a fellow student brought this up on the computer and began looking up different professors’ names… and outrageous salaries.
Although the pay statistics in the database are from the 2006-2007 school year, it’s still shocking how much University employees actually make. Naturally, I began my own search through the database finding my old professors. As I perused the site, I grew more and more curious as to what actually determines this pay. My calculus teacher made $91,000, my English professor made $48,000 and one of my professors from last semester made upward of $200,000.
Many students speculate that a professor’s primary focus at a university is to conduct research and receive grants in order to do so.
According to Jim Martin, chair for the Faculty Senate, the numbers on The Charlotte Observer’s Web page are the base salaries that cover professors’ combined responsibilities, which include research and teaching. Martin also explains that this research is not just for personal or University gain, but usually is one-on-one work with the graduate students in each department.
Regardless, a salary of $52,500 to teach one course section in Nelson Auditorium while working another job on the side is far too much, especially when the TAs do all of the grading while the professor flips through a PowerPoint presentation and complains about not getting tenure.
Whatever happened to the “joy of teaching”? Is this not applicable anymore? In my two years as a college student, I have run across some professors who really loved what they did and others who had difficulty answering questions, speaking English and seemed to hate their jobs in general.
I always regarded teaching as a privilege – one of the happiest days of my life was being hired as an E115 lab instructor. In the four sections that I’ve taught of the course, I never once lost my enthusiasm for teaching.
Maybe I went a little above and beyond by bringing baked goods into my classes every week, but I wasn’t doing the job for the money. I was doing it because it was rewarding to help others and share my knowledge about the course material with my fellow students.
So look up your professors, especially the mean ones, and prepared to be shocked. It might be time for some of the professors to put the joy back into teaching… or have their salaries reevaluated.
The Charlotte Observer’s professors’ salaries information can be found at http://www.charlotte.com/universitypay/.
E-mail your comments about professors’ salaries to letters@technicianonline.com.