The liberal professor teaches two classes which means he is in the classroom only 6 hours per week (2 three hour classes). Likely he recycles lectures he wrote years ago and has graduate teaching assistants to administer and grade exams. Even if devotes one hour per day to office hours for student, he is still devoting only 11 hours per week to his teaching role. The remaining 29 hours per week he is likely agitating or earning outside money (consulting, speeches, grant work).
State employee professors are paid for a 40 hour week. In the private sector a $170,000 per year senior manager or executive will put in 60-70 hours per week.
Assuming the professor works 48 weeks per year, his effective pay rate for the 6 hours he actually spends in the classroom teaching is $590 per hour. Nice wages by any standard. Certainly upper 1% on an hourly basis for a hypocrite who rails against wealth and affluence.
Governor Walker has been trying to force tenured professors in Wisconsin to teach 3 classes per semester which means 9 hours per week in the classroom instead of 6. The academic establishment and leftist Democrat politicians have been fighting him claiming 9 hours per week in the classroom is too much and will be detrimental to “research” and writing. Perhaps they have forgotten the primary mission of state supported schools is instruction of students, not subsidizing the interests of the faculty.
The cost of higher education in this nation has exploded due to the large number of tenured professors performing actual teaching duties in the classroom less than 20% of a 40 hour week plus the hiring of layers of equally unproductive administrators.
If only a courageous governor would take on the academic establishment by overhauling an entire state university system. Slash the bureaucracy, eliminate tenure, and require all professors to be in the classroom at least 15 hours per week (i.e. teach 5 classes per week). Increasing the teaching load from 2 classes to 5 classes will allow a state university to cut at least 50% of the teaching staff. Make a similar cut to the bloated administrative staff and state universities will be able to slash tuition and fees benefiting the middle class and the taxpayers.
The private sector in America has gone through waves of downsizing over the past 20 years. At the same time state supported universities have been on an expansion boom and the cost of a college education has increased at double the rate of inflation. Time for higher education to downsize. Will a GOP governor - Walker, Jindall, Haley, Kasich, McCrory - go after the fat and drive performance? It will take bold decisive action, not tiny cuts combined with more government subsidies, to bend the cost curve in higher education.
I would agree with most of what you have to say...except for the academic research and writing. Over the past hundred years, we’ve built the whole university education system into a ‘must-reproduce’ organization and the players must continually go out and write papers or books on things that may or may not have value.
I do think the whole tenure business needs a review and a rebuild is in order. If the state is unable to control or manipulate the university system within it....then the state needs to detach the university and force them into a private operation (hint: massive tuition costs).