I teach 5 sections of writing every semester and I make $33,000 a year. I have class, preparation, committee meetings, and advising. I have a Masters, a PhD and a shitload of student loans.
Undergrad students who tutor in our tutoring center, reading rough drafts sometimes but mostly sitting in air conditioning and Facetiming their friends, make $27 an hour for a maximum of 20 hours per week. That;s $17,000 per school year.
That is all I have.
Lisel from Lafayette
Wow, the South really does suck. You have my condolences. There's always alcoholism.
ReplyDeleteThe Gog
Because I'm a trailing spouse and have moved around a great deal (12 schools in 30 years), I often settle for positions that are usually set up for entry level folks. And if you saw my face and belly you'd know I'm not entry level anything anymore...
DeleteSo that salary is not substantially lower than what I earn now in my mid 50s. I made $27,000 in 1988. $100,000 in 2000. And I'm almost all the way back to where I started as I slide near the end of my teaching career.
God, academics can be harsh.
27 dollars an hour? Is that a joke? I make less than half that doing actual work. I LOVE reading and editing things. If I could get paid twenty+ dollars an hour to do it, I so would.
ReplyDeleteI buy things for a school district. It's my job, and there are others like it, but this one is mine.
You could ask your college's writing center what they pay and fill out an application.
DeleteAt my college it's very hard to get the job because it pays $20 an hour and it's a very small school.
I'd rather dedicate my time to working the full time job I have that's really nice for the career I have planned even if it does pay less per hour (though I can work significantly more hours). Also while I might write well, I wouldn't be able to teach people to write well. It's very frustrating to me to explain to others how to write or to even go through and explain amendments. I have no problem editing writing, but explaining edits to the submitter is like shoving bamboo under my fingernails.
Delete"Well, why did you remove this comma?"
"Because it was fucking incorrect."
"Well, what made it incorrect?"
"I don't know. What makes the sun warm? What makes the shade cool? It just IS wrong!"
I think it's because I learned the vast majority of what I know about English written language just by reading and not actual instruction. So I can write just fine, tell you whether something is correct or incorrect, and change it so that it's correct. But actually explaining its being correct or incorrect is incredibly frustrating. Which is not helpful to students, I'm sure.
Also, if I'm being honest, I'd start trolling students by making them add asinine things to their essays. Like starting every essay with "In these times, today..."
DeleteConan, I feel you. Until I had to teach remedial writing (and the 7 rules of commas) I had no idea WHY it was wrong. It just was.
DeleteNow I know, and can tell someone. This and $3 should get me a cup of coffee...
Indeed. Since I learned English as Conan did, my first few years of teaching writing involved a lot of looking things up in handbooks to figure out *why* what I knew was right was right (and I still do that sometimes, especially when explaining English to people whose first language is not English).
DeleteI learned most of the rules of English grammar by learning other languages (not that I can actually speak those languages). I think if more Americans were to do the same, we would not encounter so many cringeworthy constructs like "The hole was dug by Bob and I."
DeletePunctuation is a part of that learning in some vague way. I'm not sure where I was "taught" about semicolons, but I probably learned aboout them mostly from the authors I liked during those formative years, some of whom are still turning out a semicolon-laden tome every few years.
My wife runs the writing center at a major Midwest university and trains and mentors writing center instructors. They make $30 an hour. Most are juniors and seniors and have a cap of 15 hours per week.
ReplyDeleteMy center runs 42 weeks a year, ten during the summer. I have a rotation of about 40 students who work for me, and at least 20 of them work year round. Our university limits them to 15 hours per week, but there's no limit in summer when those students are not taking classes.
ReplyDeleteOur campus borders an educational training center that pays math and English tutors $30 an hour, so we pretty much have to pay the $25 an hour we do.
My top people, and this is just the top 20% or so, make about $15,000 a year.
You are right. You have won the Internet. None of what I said actually happens. You truly are exactly how people describe you on this site.
DeletePlease, Monica, do go on. Your point about Dakota in Denver's writing centre, where you apparently know more about the centre's workload than Dakota, who actually runs the centre, is...?
DeleteAm I missing some kind of history here?
DeleteBe nice, everybody. Monica is no troll.
DeleteYou're clearly underpaid, Lisel. I'm not convinced that the writing tutors are overpaid, however (though their workplace may be overstaffed; the idea of underoccupied writing center tutors is new to me; I was always busy when I did that work as a grad student, and the writing center at my present institution has just about every available slot quickly snapped up, especially but not exclusively by our burgeoning population of L2 learners).
ReplyDeleteA well-run writing center is a really valuable thing.
So, of course, is a decently-paid faculty with a reasonable course load.
The RGM pays me a hundred bucks and tab of LSD for each comment I post here. I always thought that was adequate. Should I demand more?
ReplyDeleteAnd does it seem odd that Bernie Sanders has only ever been mentioned once (now twice) at CM?
ReplyDeleteGenerally Confused
ReplyDeleteThe Writing Center where I work starts 1 week after the quarter begins and closes for finals week. These are budgetary concessions. I don't know how much tutors are paid--I know it's not more than $25 per hour and may be as low as $17. I always thought my institution was pretty progressive, but I guess not. Of course, I am at a smaller campus in a 4 campus system.
This is bringing back memories of my part-time job as a tutor, while in 2nd year, for 1st year chemistry students. I made $10/hr when the minimum wage was $5/hr, with $8/hr paid by the student government and the student coughing up $2/hr. Current minimum wage is about $11/hr, so assuming a similar boost in wages that'd equate to a present-day wage of $22/hr. $22/hr for someone with only a year of uni under their belt to tutor other students... hmmm...
ReplyDeleteTeaching only one class this semester (all that was available) but helping to develop two. My monthly take home pay divided by the number of hours that I am working actually does equal an hourly rate of $5. Really - I kept detailed records for a week because I was curious about the reality of the situation. I'm also on a committee and participating in a semester-long PD workshop.
ReplyDeleteI love teaching. Not so sure about this job right now.
As a graduate student, we were considered fortunate to make $12 an hour in the Math Lab though, much of our income was supplemented with private tutoring for $20 an hour (I suppose that's nothing to complain about as it is a productive result of earning our undergraduate degree...).
ReplyDeleteAnd this is in the south? I've been to the south, once, when I was 8 years old, and that was a on a road-trip to South Carolina to pick up my sister who had been discharged from the Navy. We drove through Mississippi mostly without stopping, just to avoid any "special" people who hate out of state visitors.
My impression is that the south is poor as fuck. Perhaps I should re-evaluate that image.