The teachers union in a school district near where I live has gone on strike, resulting in the usual outcry from residents lining up on the side of the union or the school board. One (anonymous) letter writer in today’s newspaper made an interesting calculation regarding teachers’ salaries:

According to the union’s proposal, teachers work 7.5 hour days (including lunch) for 192 days a year. Assuming a 45-minute lunch period, a teacher now earning the starting salary of $42,870 is earning $33.08 per hour, and a teacher with the maximum salary of $93,948 is earning $72.49 per hour. If they worked 8 hours a day for 50 weeks out of the year at these hourly rates, they would earn $66,157 and $144,981.

Update: (Apr 20) If we assume teachers work about the same number of hours per week as other professionals when you include grading homework and tests at home, etc., and adjust only for the number of days worked, the teacher salaries are equivalent to $55,820 and $122,328.

Update 2: (Apr 22) It has come to my attention that Pennsylvania has the 11th highest average teacher salary, and is 7th in teacher salary compared to median household income (source). So even if Pennsylvania teachers are fairly paid, it is possible that teachers in Colorado are not. (Indiana is ranked 18th in absolute teacher salary.)

So my question to ITA readers: is this a fair analysis? It suggests that teachers are actually quite well compensated for their time. I don’t know of any job which would pay $66,000 to a person fresh out of college with a 4-year degree. It is true that teachers often take work home with them, to grade homework and tests. But many professionals also work from home outside of normal business hours.

I think the strongest argument against this analysis is that teachers really can’t help the fact that school is not in session in the summer, and it is very difficult for them to find a part-time job during the summer which would pay anything near their teaching jobs. On the other hand, if the school year were to be substantially lengthened, it’s a sure bet the teachers union would seek a proportional (or at least a substantial) increase in teacher salaries.

Some of Brand’s prior appearances at ITA:

• “Indiana-related Sports News,” by Eric Seymour, August 6, 2005.
  
• “Indiana University President Adam Herbert,” by Zach Wendling, August 9, 2005
  
• “IU Basketball Has Up-and-Down Week,” by Adam Packer, August 15, 2005
  

• An evangelical megachurch in suburban Atlanta has won accreditation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. 25 students who took classes at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, GA will receive degrees in criminal justice, hospitality, and business administration from North Carolina Central University. The university had failed to notify a regional accreditor that some of its students were taking classes 400 miles away.


• Soda bans in school do little to improve childhood health. Thanks nanny state.


• Via Lifehacker, here are 77 books that a person can read to give themselves the equivalent of an MBA. This “personal MBA” is an interesting idea. B-school is largely about personal networking, so you’ll miss that, but at least you’ll get the book learning part of it. And if you can get your hands on some church letterhead…


• Conservatives go highbrow in trying to make inroads on campus.

For reasons I can’t really explain, a couple of days ago I picked up Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and started reading it. Ugh. What a whiny, petulant little book it turned out to be. Did people really take it seriously when it was first published? Am I not giving it a proper chance by giving up after a hundred pages? Did it seem more relevant in 1987 than in 2008? Or what?

My previous thoughts on CotAM here. I have since found more rewarding ways to make myself feel stupid.

This year, the field of candidates is the smallest I can remember since I graduated (the first time). There are only two challengers to the incumbent, Pat Shoulders, who was elected three years ago after serving out his gubernatorial appointment. I know Josh, a fellow Evansvillian, is a big fan of Shoulders, but [see comments] I cannot abide re-electing any trustee who has overseen the entrenchment of mediocrity at IU. And yes, that especially means the selection of an administrative bureaucrat as president of the university. We need bigger changes, even radical ones, and we will never get those without turnover among the trustees.
The challengers are Samuel Locke, a consultant from southern Indiana, and Kelly Smith, an attorney at a prestigious Indianapolis law firm.
While Smith kindly responded to my questions and concerns, I am much more impressed with Locke. For starters, his presence on the Internet indicates the ambition he brings to the office. In addition to his website, I’ve also seen advertisements on Facebook and Google Ads. It was also flattering to have him email me about the election first (I’m usually the one sending out messages); apparently, searching for information about the alumni trustee elections brings up my posts here at ITA. The impressive fact here isn’t that ITA is a major source of news, it’s that Locke had the presence of mind to do a little Googling and to reach out to a concerned alumnus. He promptly responded to my questions and concerns.
Locke’s positions on the governance of the university are thoughtful and refreshing. More importantly, they echo what I hear from fellow alumni: the prestige of the university is slipping while the trustees and administration are ineffectual and insular. Three things especially jump out at me: 1) concerns about faculty pay (my pet topic), 2) the role of regional campuses, and 3) sharp attention to the less-savoury conduct of the old regime. (By contrast, Shoulder’s candidate questionnaire, the closest he comes to providing a substantial statement of his platform, is a string of platitudes.)
I was further heartened by Locke’s response to my emailed questions. On the 2004 Indiana Government Efficiency Commission report on higher education, still the touchstone for all meaningful discussion of the future of higher education in the State, Locke wrote:

A lot of my thoughts about the role of the regional campuses stem from the report — like the report, I think IU can do a much better job at utilizing the regional campuses to play a more strategic role in helping Indiana communities shift from an industrial to service economy. To make this possible, as the report also indicates, more funding will need to be shifted to financial aid resources to make access to degrees more attainable. I also take many of the findings as basic common sense, which unfortunately has been a bit lacking of late. Particularly, the basic premise that we can be more efficient and effective with no more dollars is true — controlling spending, finding more creative revenue sources, and even implementing some of the RCM facets can help in this regard. Lastly, I agree that there is a graduate drain in Indiana (I, myself, went elsewhere for my Master’s, leading to an equally troublesome drain in research. Oddly, there never seemed to be a big push for continuing into graduate education — perhaps some simple marketing could help improve this dilemma, especially given the current job market conditions. One point where I disagree with the report is in phasing out associate degree programs — I think these are great tools to “reel students in,” even if they aren’t directly impacting the research output and even though Ivy Tech may offer a similar degree. In many cases, students need this level in order to feel as though education is attainable.

On IU’s intractable bureaucracy:

Improving the bureaucratic inertia can start with a change of attitudes from Trustees. It seems as though Trustee meetings are typically mere formalities, with tough questions rarely being asked. In all of the meeting minutes I’ve looked at, there are many references to budget summaries, but never the entire budget. Simply having an engaged Trustee will help to crisp the workflow with many transactions and processes. Beyond this, shifting more control over institutional decision-making to folks in the field — regional campus chancellors, the IUB provost, etc. can help as well — leaving the President, VPs, and Trustees to address issues from a more strategic, rather than bureaucratic, standpoint.

NB: Another sign of ambition and gravity — reading through meeting minutes.
On funding priorities, I was not thrilled to see yet more talk of making college more affordable, a subject on which I am a contrarian. But Locke quickly won me over:

Wider access to student aid, a close second would be improving faculty pay to be more in line with our Big 10 peers. But neither of these can or should be implemented by increasing tuition — more responsible spending should be goal.

My fellow alumni, there’s not much here to leave us wanting.
The rise of a web-savvy contender coincides with the first election in which alumni can cast ballots online (mail-in and in-person ballots are also still available). As long as you are here reading ITA, you might as well click over and vote for Samuel Locke for alumni trustee.