August 2009

My teaching schedule was changed today. Now I only have 3.5 preps instead of 4.5 preps.

Where’s the half prep coming from? Well, I’m teaching two freshman composition courses at the same college, but one of them is for health science majors, and is very intensely on that, and the other is a generic freshman comp. So they are similar but not the same.

I am grateful for the workload reduction.

College is a very different proposition as an instructor versus as a parent.

It’s been too long since I was a student to really remember perfectly, but I mostly remember walking around a bit nervous and a bit confused but willing to ask anyone anything.

That does not work out quite so well as a mom instead of as a student.

The adjunct life is full of hard choices: Will my semesters of service pay off with an offer for a more secure position? Will my classes pay enough to justify my commute? Will the six nameplates on my cubby-hole/office door flag me for instant student disrespect? In the adjunct world, decisions are precious because they are few. You often live from class offer to class offer, semester to semester, taking what you can get. You apply to lots of colleges hoping that a few will have work for you.

Thus begins an article for Inside Higher Ed by Burnt Out Adjunct.

I don’t recommend teaching ten courses, even if you are not an English comp teacher. That’s just crazy! Of course, I’m feeling a little crazy teaching six courses this fall, so who am I to talk?

Of course, I’ve seen this kind of teaching load before from Jill Carroll. It, and all the related writing, seems to have helped. She’s now teaching full-time at Rice University, a Southern Ivy League equivalent (or wannabe, depending on your viewpoint).

We teach because we want to, but we can’t make a living wage at a normal load, so we teach more. As we teach more we start to make a living wage (though nowhere near as high as mentioned in the comments on the Inside Higher Ed article). Then we can do what we need to, but we are still playing into an abusive system.

I will say this though, it’s an abusive system whether you are teaching one class or twenty.

At CC1 I make $1760/class as opposed to the full-timer’s $5500/class. I don’t get paid health care. They do. I don’t get bookstore discounts. They do. Etc. You get the idea.

If a full-time with a PhD makes $5500/class and a part-timer with a PhD makes $1760/class (as does an MA or, for remedial classes, a BA), there is an inequity. Is inequity bias? abuse? or simply an example of potential failures of capitalism?

A new publishing company, Diversion Press, will be publishing one of my poems in an upcoming poetry anthology.

I’m thinking I’ll have to buy at least four copies (me, folks, sons). I’m sure yall want to purchase too, right?

I saw some cute shirts via fb ads that I thought were fun. Wish I could wear tee-shirts to work.

I don’t agree with all the propaganda on the shirts, but the English major ones are cute.

“Idioms are for the birds” is another favorite.

from Mental Floss

Summer may mean slow times on campus, but instructors at Simon Fraser University have already had reason to contemplate slapping students with a new, failing grade: FD, failed for academic dishonesty.

from The Globe and the Mail.

But others do.

“The EEOC Goes After a Catholic College… For Being Catholic”

Today’s Inside Higher Ed details the rather disturbing story of an EEOC finding that Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college in North Carolina, engaged in “gender discrimination” when it refused — consistent with its Catholic faith — to cover oral contraceptives in its employer-provided health-care plan.

I do not understand why not covering oral contraceptives is gender discrimination. They don’t buy contraceptives for men. They don’t pay for contraceptives for women.

This is a violation of religious freedom and is wrong. I am not Catholic and I do not believe that contraceptives are a sin, but I do believe that people should have the right to follow their faith as long as it does not put an undo burden on someone else. Buying contraceptives out of your flex plan does not put an undue burden on anyone. Shoot, you can get them free at Planned Parenthood.

I’m working on my book for Chelsea; it is almost finished. I am also working on a chapter for a book; it has quite a ways to go. One of my articles has been moved from the January edition of the journal to the September edition. I am excited about that. Proofs are coming now.

I’ve been subbing for an American lit class for a friend who got a full-time job and has to go to orientation.

So I’m not writing a lot here.

And I probably won’t be either. I haven’t put together my syllabi for my six composition classes this fall. I’ve taught all the classes before, but things change.

“Illegal Immigrants Spend Millions Extra On Tuition”

Amazing! A state law banning illegal immigrants from in-state tuition actually seems to work!

In 2006 over 70% of Arizona voters passed Prop. 300, “rendering undocumented Arizona students ineligible for in-state tuition rates or state scholarships.” Now comes the Arizona Republic with a report documenting that the new law is working as intended, to the dismay of those who opposed it, and, it appears, the author of the Republic’s report. (HatTip to) Note, for example, that “Extra” in the Republic’s headline. Doesn’t that imply “more than they should be paying”? But whether “Extra” or not, they are paying more than would be if they were treated the same as legal state residents.

More than 3,400 community college students and nearly 300 university students paid nonresident tuition because they couldn’t prove they were in the country legally. Thousands more university students never had their immigration status checked because they didn’t seek in-state tuition or state-funded financial aid.
Because nonresident students pay more than the actual cost of providing their education, Arizona’s colleges and universities actually profited from illegal immigrant students.

An example from California says that unless non-resident fees are more than 3x resident fees, the non-residents there are not paying more. That implies that non-residents are not, in fact, paying higher than the actual cost of their tuition.

On the other hand, California’s law says:

(3) It is the intent of the Legislature that under no circumstances shall an institution’s level of nonresident tuition plus required student fees fall below the marginal cost of instruction for that segment.

That implies they could go up and subsidize education for residents.

Pennsylvania says non-resident cost is to avoid subsidizing. But this may have changed, based on this spreadsheet’s data.

Idaho State’s website says:

Virtually all public universities and colleges in the United States have a two-tier fee structure — resident and non-resident—whereby Non-Residents (visa holders) of the United States pay for the actual cost of instruction while residents of a particular state only pay for part of it and the rest is paid by a taxpayer subsidy.

A spreadsheet on non-resident tution seems to say that many states are charging more than the price of the education.

Texas doesn’t seem to be doing what it says on the spreadsheet though:

Some institutional representatives have questioned this policy, arguing that if the institution charges non-resident tuition to that out-of-state “electronic” student, the state’s costs are therefore covered and the institution should be allowed to submit the credit hours earned by that student for formula reimbursement. In many cases, however, out-of-state tuition does not cover the state’s cost; this is most evident at the graduate level. In general, if distance education courses delivered out-of-state were eligible for formula funding, Texas taxpayers would be subsidizing the education of non-Texans who– unlike non-residents on campus — are not living in Texas, not paying sales and perhaps other taxes here, and not supporting the Texas economy. We do not believe that is the intent of the Legislature. [ed. Some changes for font problems in original, so dashes, quote marks, and apostrophes were reinserted.]

I was wrong. Texas used to charge only the cost of tuition. Texas is now charging non-residents based on OTHER states’ tuition:
Texas explanation of the bill that changed Texas non-resident policy.

Nonresident undergraduate tuition at Texas senior colleges and universities is set [in 1995] at 100 percent of the cost of education (COE), as determined by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
…
HB 1792 would make nonresident tuition at Texas’ public colleges and universities equal to the average undergraduate tuition charged nonresidents at public universities in the five most populous states besides Texas, unless otherwise stipulated in law.

So, I guess, as a means of discouraging non-residents, some states have moved to higher tuition.