My math prof

[luunta]

Re: My math prof

Average household income in Vancouver is like 65k or something for TWO people.

No, 60k isn't much. I live on close to that.

[J-hop]

Re: My math prof

Yea garbage men make about that and most have no where near 9-12 years post secondary schooling(believe it or not).

Also $61k/year seems high for a first year grade school teacher?

I agree sounds a little high, probably just a number thrown at her from a brochure.

Actual professors (ie PhDs teaching at universities) make a half decent salary but as rondal mentioned the work/pay ratio isn't so good, most of them earn money through their research etc.

[gaffer]

Re: My math prof

i dont see how professors could not be making good money, hell, my gf just got her maters of education and first year salary teaching anything k-12 for her is 61k a year for the first year an then increases substantially every year

According to the Calgary Catholic contract a first year teacher with 6 years education, which is the most they recognize will make $54,700 a year, and will top out at $83,000 after 12 years of teaching under the current collective agreement. A teacher will make more if they are an administrator, but that does not happen in thier first year.

Teacher contracts are almost identical across the province due to collective bargining acoss all the boards in the province.

That is all assuming that she can get a job. My wife's school just surplused 7 new teachers due to budget deficits in the board.

With all that said, teaching is a good career for the right person. Summers off to take care of kids should you have them, and good pensions. It also has it's drawbacks.

A

[Kor]

Re: My math prof

Hopefully there is no confusion that the life and job of a University professor is different from a teacher. Teaching is very little of what professors do. Most of them teach only one course for 3 or 4 hours a week each semester, sometimes not even every semester. Most professors spent the bulk of their time doing research. Also I have never heard of professors clearing 100K unless maybe they are a department head or faculty dean in Calgary.

[bonfire]

Re: My math prof

Proffs are fucking useless.

I am sick of paying tuition for some half-wit ****, who can barely string two english words together, while I am trying to figure out some complex ****, because this guy had a published article and is researching some ******** topic.

I would pay all teachers/proffs shitty, and have performance/review based bonuses. Instead of letting a bunch of hacks, surf through life fucking the dog, sucking up tax dollars. Cutting teachers, because of budget cuts, and no doubt the newest teachers, the ones with the spark, are getting cut. The old dried up hacks, are chilling in relative security, doing a shitty job, hiding behind their union.

The Dean at UofA makes $700,000 a year, and they just raised my tuition again, and they have a 57million dollar deficit, saweet.

How about less money blown on researching ********, cutting ********/redundant proffs, and getting that deficit down?

End Rant.

[Kor]

Re: My math prof

I have to disagree. Fact is that universities are about higher learning, NOT about training you for your job. You want job training, great. Accept that it's secondary at the University or else go to a college or technical school. Period.

I'm sick of people thinking that the university's job is primarily to grant them a BA or BSc in some field knowledge that's likely 50 years old and they could learn by themselves. Guess what, that second year stats course you're taking is NOT complex. It's something that almost anyone can do with a few months of training. A child can learn it. You're paying for research with your tuition, thats why they agree to teach you. And they are wasting their time teaching you so that they can fund their research. Hey if you're sick of paying that tuition, why don't you go somewhere else with your time and money?

Everything you see around you was developed through research: science, medicine, technology, engineering, literature. The people pushing things forward are thinking about problems that nobody has ever solved. They may seem minor to you sometimes but every little step forward in 100 different directions yields 1 major new find. Giants are raised up on the shoulders of the everyday professor.

Yeah they may not speak English as their first language. Get over it. That's not a qualification for being a University Professor.

Maybe you should learn why they created tenure. Why people fight for it. Academic freedom, the ability to stand in front of 100 geniuses and tell them they are wrong and you'll prove it. Your system of shitty pay and bonuses would destroy any kind of real pursuit of knowledge outside of industry. Guess what, the guy who invents a cure for a rare disease would have gotten canned by you because he wasn't working on something more "popular" or producing results for the first couple years.

The only thing we agree on is that Dean's make too much money. So do many CEO's. Often they have to pay a lot to get someone who is in high demand, that's just the way the world works. A good dean or CEO can save a million dollars to a big company or organization in 1 day, and a bad one can lose millions in a day too. Big risks, big rewards.

[J-hop]

Re: My math prof

I agree with a lot of what you've said and I agree paying teachers and profs less is not a good idea. I do however find it aggravating when I spend 500+ textbooks to learn things on my own. I Had one particularly bad class this year where I went to class, studied my notes read and understood the text book material and yet still would get destroyed on exams because the prof didn't do a proper job explaining the material to us (the average on our midterm was 19%).

I agree that most of university is learning things on your own and from starting to work in industry I see the kids that cheated etc through their degrees are drowning because they don't know how to learn in the real world and don't have the work ethic. But on that same note I think that profs should be paid more for their teaching then their research because in the end Universities are supposed to be primarily places of "higher education" not research institutes.