I was a college professor for 20 years—even tenured, full professor at the end of my teaching career. The unjust nature of adjunct teaching is well known, well documented, and worthy of its own post. But that’s not the story I’m telling today:
Several years ago there was a bill before the state legislature to change the definition of an “exempt” employee. The proposed law said that if an employee made less than $50,000 per year, they could not be considered exempt and had to be fairly compensated for their hours and any overtime they worked.
The problem was, my small, liberal arts school had built its athletic dept on the backs of people making $16-18,000 a year (euphemistically called a “stipend”). These individuals were required to recruit, train, and coach. At times their weeks would approach 80-100 hours, and if their teams lost they’d be fired. They did it for the love of the sport and the hope for enough exposure to get a paying coaching job.
The existence of this practice was bad enough. But what irritated me most was the college actively lobbying the state legislature to kill the bill. In fact, in defense of this position, the president of the college sat in my office and actually uttered the phrase “Well, obviously we can’t pay people for the actual work they do. It would close the college.”
My plan to leave teaching in Higher Ed—the only job I’d wanted since I was 21–began that day.
P. S. The bill died. I left the school. That president is still employed, though after I left he still had to cut about half the staff and faculty to make budget.