Is $98/hour a high rate of pay?

John Sides and Joshua Tucker link to a news article by Jeremy Peters that reports that former New York State governor Eliot Spitzer is teaching a course at the City University of New York for “$98.43 an hour, or about $4,500 for the semester.” This comes out to 45 or 46 hours–let’s say 3 classroom hours a week for 15 weeks.

I noticed a few interesting things in the article.

1. I think it’s ridiculous to consider $4500 for a course to be a rate of $98/hour. Teaching isn’t just lecturing. You also have to prepare the classes, meet with students, write exams, and grade homeworks. $98/hour sounds like a lot, but it’s based on a low denominator.

(There are exceptions, though. I know of a professor who paid the T.A. $100 per lecture to teach the class when the prof was out of town. It happened several times during the semester.)

2. I thought it was interesting that the commenters identified in the news article seemed to think that $4500 was a high rate of pay. I mean, suppose you teach 8 courses a year at $4500 each. That’s $36,000. Hardly Richie Rich territory. This point is made at the very end of the article (“The point is not that Spitzer is paid too much, but rather that most adjuncts are paid too little”) but it didn’t really come through at first.

3. Sides writes that “This isn’t pretty.” I don’t see what’s so bad about Spitzer teaching a class. He knows a lot about politics and would seem to be well qualified to be an adjunct professor. I thought that was the ideal, to have adjuncts who are working professionals who take time off to teach a class.

9 thoughts on “Is $98/hour a high rate of pay?

  1. I agree with Andrew's comments. Point of note, Spitzer is donating his teaching salary back to CUNY. CUNY pay scales are based on the PSC-CUNY contract, and slide depending on your level of education, experience and Tenure.

  2. As something of a side note, in undergrad we used to figure that for 20 hours of classroom time a week over 26 weeks, and tuition around $30,000, we were each paying about $60/hour for the privilege of being lectured to/at. Multiply that by 100 students, and Spitzer's a downright bargain.

  3. $4,500 to teach ONE COURSE for ONE SEMESTER at CUNY? I expect every itinerant adjunct lecturer in the state of Texas (going rate is ~$2200) to hop a bus for the Big Apple in time for the spring semester.

  4. When I was a first-year grad student, the professor of the class I was TA-ing, Mark Tuttle, paid me $100 for a lecture when he was out of town. It had a big influence on me in terms of making me feel like a part of a teaching profession. So, way to go, Mark.

  5. Shouldn't we consider time he spends commuting to and from classes? He's not a full time lecturer, and he probably lives in some far-out place like Rye or Greenwich – he may spend more time commuting than teaching.

  6. There are a few issues here. First, Mr Spitzer is making the maximum possible for an adjunct because of his exceptional professional qualifications. No surprise there. Second, an "hourly rate" is a ridiculous concept for adjunct faculty and even more preposterous for full faculty. It's meaningless. He is making $4,500 to teach a course, period. As Andrew explains, a 100% teaching commitment (8 courses) means $36,000 which is rather low, especially for NYC. (Although it's more than in most universities, AFAIK.) However, third and last, adjunct faculty positions are not meant to be full-time jobs, and I don't know how it has become that some people try to be full-time adjuncts. Rather, they should be part-time gigs for people who have another, full-time job. Teaching just one course is actually fun (it becomes a drag at 4+ a year), so it makes sense for people who have regular careers to teach one course on the side and pocket a little extra cash.

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