Way back when I first took my adjunct job, I received this as part of my correspondence when I asked if the pitifully low salary was standard for the area:
"The standard of living is less here."
I'm almost certain the Chair meant the "cost of living." However, I have found that "standard," given the sad pay and misleading promises may have been the correct choice of words.
Ahh, yes. . . I got the line "The cost of living is less here" when I asked why mean salaries here at Euphoric State were less than the regional average, to say nothing of the national average. My erstwhile department head said nothing about the standard of living, but, well, that proved to be lower here, too.
ReplyDeleteIt's largely BS, anyway -- the cost of housing (purchase or rent) is indeed lower, but food and transportation aren't, and neither is travel to conferences and field sites (do some universities really pay for those? Wow. . . ), subscriptions to major journals in my field that the library doesn't get (all of them), and so on. . .