Career Menopause…”Too Old to Rock’n Roll, Too Young to die!!!”

too_old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwn0R1PFUwU

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
CAREER PLANNING
Coping with “Career Menopause”
-by Bronwyn Fryer
OCTOBER 28, 2009

“Night sweats. Heart palpitations. Crying jags. Mood swings. I’m a 55-year old woman, well and gratefully past that hormonal “change of life.” So what the heck was this thing?

My brilliant (and younger) colleague Julia Kirby took me out for a glass of wine and patted my arm. “Don’t worry,” she told me sympathetically. “It’s career menopause.” Count on Julia to consistently deliver le mot juste.

I’ve always loved my job, but for ages I’ve been feeling something else — call it a longing for greater self-fulfillment — tugging at me. Relatives and friends have had brushes with death, or have died. I, too, have felt the shadow of my own mortality. I’ve been aching to write The Great American Novel, or volunteer for the Peace Corps, or sing in my own band, or do some other as-yet-undefined-thing — before it’s too late.

I’ve spent sleepless nights wondering whether I could possibly afford to make a career change — an especially crazy idea in a down economy.

Those of us in Jethro Tull’s “Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die” cohort are caught in a bind. We’re working at full-tilt because we have dependents and financial obligations — we can’t afford to retire early. At the same time, we’re getting tired and thinking of downsizing. We are proud of our well-honed experience and skills, but we’re also yearning to polish long-neglected aptitudes or build new ones. Many of us are frustrated and restless.

I called Marc Freedman, who runs a think tank called Civic Ventures. His organization studies issues affecting boomers who are undergoing psychic, generational, physical and economic transitions.

“An enormous number of people your age are hitting the career wall,” Marc told me. “You’ve been working very hard for a long time. The ‘pause’ in the term ‘career menopause’ catches it exactly. It feels awkward, uncomfortable, personal, and lonely. But you’re not alone at all.” Marc observed that at my stage of life there is no clearly-defined path, as there is for my college-bound daughter. “You are in a do-it-yourself situation.”

According to a survey by Civic Ventures:

  • A majority of Americans in the 40-70 age bracket want work with more meaning (i.e., work that contributes directly to society such as teaching, healthcare, government or nonprofit work).
  • 2/3 of those interested in what Freeman calls “encore careers” want to use their skills and experience to help others.
  • Those most interested in ‘encore careers’ are trailing-edge boomers – ages 44-50.
  • And get this: 84% of those who found jobs in education, healthcare, government and nonprofit work say they get a huge amount of satisfaction in their jobs.

So what are we all make of this? If we want to “retire retirement,” what other options do we have?

I finally hit on a solution that works for me. I’ve changed jobs — I’m no longer a senior HBR editor but a “contributing” editor. I love the title. (Hey — I’m contributing!) In my new role I’m off the payroll but working on freelance projects for my company. I’m also diving into new undertakings — volunteering in a hospice, songwriting, and catching up on the part of me that’s been ignored for a very long while.”

Textbook sticker prices soar, but expanding options keep expenses in check

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August 17, 2015 6:00 am • by Pat Schneider

UW-Madison student Kezia Weigel-Sterr was at University Book Store on the State Street Mall Wednesday to pick up the only text for the fall semester she was not able to rent online from a bookseller or publisher.

Her total textbook price tag: $286 — a lot less than the $400 or so she has paid in past semesters.

As a political science major, the books her instructors assign are not typically the big wallet busters used in some classes, particularly the sciences, but some courses require a lot of texts.

“There was one class last semester that had eight different books,” said Weigel-Sterr, who will be a sophomore in September.

She rented all those books and for another class used a reserve copy of the text at a university library instead of purchasing it.

“Nobody else was looking at it, but I could only have it out for two hours at a time,” she said.

For another course, her professor, Donald Downs, gave students a book he had written that was used as the text, Weigel-Sterr said.

Her story illustrates how college students are increasingly staying away from buying textbooks as a way to keep their spending down as the sticker price for books continue to soar, along with other college costs.

Textbook prices have climbed some 1,000 percent over the past four decades, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with some titles now costing $400 or even $500. But students have been spending less on course materials in each of the past few years, according to a survey of the National Association of College Stores.

Students’ average annual spending on course materials dropped from $701 in 2007-2008 to $563 in 2014-15, according to the association.

The inclusion of non-renewable computer codes needed to access supplementary materials has driven up the price of some texts and obstructed the used-book market, said Patrick McGowan, president of University Book Store.

But student expenditures are nevertheless dropping because fewer books are being required as course materials, he said.

On the UW-Madison campus, instructors are increasingly using open educational material — notes, articles, and databases that either are available free on the internet or for which the university has purchased access, McGowan said. About 40 percent of courses being offered on campus this fall have no required books, he said.

That’s one reason that the most frequent visitors to the lower level of the book store — where the stacks of textbooks are located — were people in search of the public restroom on a recent weekday afternoon.

The other reason is that online registration for classes means that the crush to register and buy texts right before the start of the semester is a thing of the past. Students now have plenty of time to shop for the best price on their books and plenty of websites on which to do it.

For University Book Store it means that revenue from textbook sales is dropping “from the mid to high single digits” every year, said McGowan. But textbook sales and rentals still account for about half the revenue at the store, where the main floor focuses on the sale of Bucky Badger apparel and other items.

For many years, the university libraries did not purchase textbooks, but that has changed in the past decade, said university librarian Edward Van Gemert.

“Our observation is that more and more students are forgoing purchasing print textbooks,“ Van Gemert said. They may find ways to share the cost, and often postpone getting a textbook until it is clear it is actually required for a course, he said.

So the library has stepped in to provide access to some textbooks. For example, in 2013-14, the library spent $25,279 to purchase 538 course-related books and videos. A separate “high-cost textbook” fund of $4,000-$5000 a year buys multiple copies of particularly expensive books used in high-enrollment classes that are held on reserve at multiple libraries for two-hour loan.

Many instructors are helping students reduce course material expenses by seeking out open educational resources, said professor Kristopher Olds, chairman of the department of geography and a senior fellow in educational innovation.

Those materials — texts, podcasts, videos and other visualizations — are designed to be available digitally at low or no cost, Olds said.

UW-Madison is trying to get a handle on the development and use of such resources on campus, and will soon launch a study, he said.

The interest in open resources is spurred by an appreciation of the high cost of curriculum materials, a culture that says knowledge should be shared and technological innovation that facilitates sharing, Olds said.

Research also shows that ready access to curriculum materials, without obstacles of cost, enhances student engagement and outcomes, he said.

Instructors are sensitive to the cost of the materials they assign, said Alex Chase, a UW-Madison senior who works at the book store.

“Working here, I’ve been able to see that it’s a thin line they walk between giving students the best and latest information and the price,” said Chase, who is majoring in legal studies and political science and plans to go to law school.

And students network about how to keep the price of books down, said student Mariel Leering, also a book store employee.

“I belong to a sorority and I ask around for someone who has the book and can tell me if it’s really necessary,” Leering said. “And working here I’ve learned that the earlier you buy books, the likelier you are to find used ones. So I passed that along to my friends.”

She said everyone routinely shops websites like Amazon and Chegg for the best prices.

“It adds up,” she said. “If you save $5 on five textbooks, that’s $25.”

Leering, a junior, is studying genetics, a field where textbook prices can be high. But a friend is lending her a $150 textbook for one class this coming semester, leaving her to purchase only one $120 text and a couple of course packets of materials collected by the instructor.

Leering figures her course material expenses will total $150.

“For once, I’m not spending $400,” she said.

Not that she’d actually be paying that full $400. Her grandfather frequently buys some of her books and she has had a college fund since she was a child, Leering said.

“I was lucky,” she said, “hopefully I won’t be in too much debt when I’m done.”

UW-Marshfield prof says cuts at colleges could slam door to education for many

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-by Pat Schneider

 

“A proposal to merge University of Wisconsin System colleges with the state technical college system — on top of a plan to regionalize the UW colleges — threatens to slam the door to education for Wisconsin students who need it most, said UW-Marshfield/Wood County associate professor Kelly Wilz.

The contraction of the two-year school system through cuts in state funding to the UW System is sparking an exodus among the skilled and dedicated instructors who are her colleagues, Wilz wrote on her blog, Dissent and Cookies, in a post picked up by The Academe Blog of the American Association of University Professors.

“The UW Colleges literally embody the Wisconsin Idea — the idea that everyone should have access to affordable, quality education. And now we’re losing our best,” wrote Wilz, who teaches communications and theatre arts.

The “best” faculty at UW-Marshfield, said Wilz, are those who go the extra mile to help their students — part-time, returning and first-generation — succeed.

“Why? Because that’s what you do … when you believe in students who have never been told they’re worthy. That they matter. That it doesn’t matter if they are the first ones in their families to go to college because we’re here to help them navigate those waters,” Wilz wrote.

She joined the chorus of critics who point to departing colleagues as a sign of the UW’s decline.

Because who wants to work in a system that may not exist a few years, that has been so crippled through defunding and divestment it’s barely able to function?” she wrote.”

 

UW professors ask Robin Vos for a seat at the table on tech college merger proposal

RobinVos

-by Pat Schneider

“UW-Madison faculty urged Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to open up talks on the possibility of merging the University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Their request came in the form of a letter from PROFS, a faculty advocacy organization, delivered Wednesday.

Assembly Republicans were to meet privately Wednesday to devise ways that the two systems could “team up to cut costs, find efficiencies and eliminate redundancies.”

Legislators should instead “create a transparent and inclusive process for any review of public higher education in the state,” faculty said in letter signed by the 18-member steering committee of PROFS.

They pointed to the controversial, abandoned plans to create a public authority for UW-Madison in 2011 and the entire UW System earlier this year as proof that “closed-door negotiations” on plans to restructure higher education in Wisconsin don’t succeed.

A better model is the public debate that preceded the 1971 merger of the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin State University system, they argue.

UW-Madison has a direct stake in the current discussion because of collaboration between UW-Madison’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and UW Extension, with some faculty holding dual appointments, PROFS leaders said.”

 

Businesses who need trained workers should, well, train workers…

-by Chris Rickert
6/16/15

Employers worry about labor shortages. One man’s shortage is another man’s raise!!!

Besides finding qualified workers, concerns over rising health care costs are also prevalent.

“If more than four years of total Republican control of state government isn’t providing the companies that belong to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce with the skilled employees they need, then maybe they should try doing more of what they should have been doing already: Hire unskilled people with brains and work ethic and train them themselves.

WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer is only the latest business representative whose rhetoric suggests workers should be showing up for their first day on the job ready to contribute to the company’s bottom line.

And if workers haven’t shelled out their own money for the training they need, they should be able to rely on legislators to force the taxpayers to shell out.

“Wisconsin business leaders are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of qualified workers as well as the lack of action by politicians to address the issue,” Bauer said in a statement detailing the results of the latest WMC survey of business leaders.

The survey and meetings with WMC members show worker shortages run the gamut, Bauer told me, from entry-level to more advanced positions, from machinists to IT professionals.

The group supports funding technical colleges and Wisconsin Fast Forward, a state worker-training grant program, as ways to close the skills gap. It also participates in state efforts to reinvigorate company apprenticeship programs.

WMC’s latest survey didn’t try to ascertain how much WMC members themselves were doing to train workers, but Bauer said that’s something the lobbying group encourages, too.

“The strategy and approach changes depending on the sector of the economy, but apprenticeships, internships, part-time jobs, etc., are all part of the solution,” he said.

“Businesses that ‘grow your own’ will have a major leg up on their competitors.”

That’s good to hear, because it’s not as if Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, its allies in the Legislature and taxpayers have been doing nothing.

Technical colleges have seen cuts, but Wisconsin Fast Forward has approved the award of $12.5 million in grants since its creation in 2013, according to the Department of Workforce Development, and DWD and Walker’s office said more than $100 million went to worker training in the 2013-15 budget.

But neither should elected officials, taxpayers and job seekers have to do everything.

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life, none of which I was specifically trained for by anybody but my employers.

Before I was allowed near one of the massive woks at the Chinese restaurant where I worked, for example, I spent hours cutting up vegetables into variously shaped tiny pieces under the tutelage of my boisterous and politically incorrect Asian boss.
Think “The Karate Kid,” but with food and more profanity.

The benefit for my employers is that I was a blank slate upon which they could write their way of doing things. The benefits for me were skill sets I was paid to attain.

Among the benefits to taxpayers was they didn’t have to foot the bill for the schooling I needed in order to make one mean Szechuan beef — that is, until I was actually able to make them one mean Szechuan beef.”

Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/columnists/chris-rickert/chris-rickert-businesses-who-need-trained-workers-should-well-train/article_00fa9a1b-fb0b-58f1-8781-0f621c7f1e19.html#ixzz3dFTJ49gd

Most colleges now weigh high school discipline records in admissions process

6/3/15 • By Pat Schneider

A new study reveals that the vast majority of colleges look at student disciplinary records during the admissions process, a practice that college access advocates call a civil rights issue that disproportionately bars students of color and students with disabilities from higher education.

“Education Suspended: The Use of High School Disciplinary Records in College Admissions,” found that three-quarters of colleges and universities collect high school disciplinary information, and that 89 percent of those institutions use the information in making admission decisions. The study, conducted by the Center for Community Alternatives, also found that half of all high schools disclose disciplinary information to colleges, even though they are not required to do so.

What’s more, 75 percent of colleges that include disciplinary records in admissions do not have written policies on how to use them and 62 percent of high schools have no written policies on disclosure of the records.

The Center for Community Justice, a New York-based nonprofit organization, advocates on behalf of students involved in the criminal justice system.

Since a 2012 release of federal data showing that African-American students and students with disabilities were disproportionately suspended and expelled, school districts across the country — including the Madison Metropolitan School District — have been revamping discipline policies in an effort to end the disparity.

This study looks at how the disparate impact of school discipline practices may follow students beyond their K-12 years.

“The stark racial disparities in the application of suspension and expulsion make the use of this information a civil rights issue,” the authors write.

Officials from the Center for Community Justice are calling on college admissions officers to stop asking for the disciplinary files of students and for high school officials to stop providing them.

“In the absence of data that show how many students are accepted or rejected once they disclose a disciplinary record, it is not enough for college admissions counselors to offer assurances that a school disciplinary record is not likely to impede admission to college,” the study’s authors conclude. “Moreover, vague assurances will do little to assuage the fears of students who are the most vulnerable to school suspension – poor students of color, whose life experiences have subjected them to exclusion in many social domains.”

As for the high schools’ participation, one argument raised by the study appeals to the to high schools’ self interest.

“High schools do not benefit from disclosing the information because it may limit access to higher education for their students,” Emily NaPier, a senior research associate and spokesperson for the CCA, told Education Week.

Sweeping changes to public education in Wisconsin draw national attention

5/29/15

-By Jessie Opoien | The Capital Times

Changes proposed for public education in Wisconsin are drawing national attention.

While the Legislature’s budget committee prepares to take up proposals to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System and to make expansive changes to the Department of Natural Resources, the rest of the state — and country — is still taking note of sweeping changes to Wisconsin’s education system approved last week.

The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss published a rundown on Thursday under the headline, “What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education?” And earlier this week, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers called one provision in the 29-page proposal passed by the Joint Finance Committee “breathtaking in its stupidity.”

While Strauss focused largely on funding for public and private schools, Evers was referring to a provision that would allow DPI to grant teaching licenses to people with a certain amount of work experience and teacher training who wish to teach technical courses. They would not be required to hold a bachelor’s degree.

Also under the bill, teaching licenses for those who wish to teach English, social studies, math or science could be granted to anyone with a bachelor’s degree who demonstrates proficiency and has relevant experience in the subject.

Evers said those changes would give Wisconsin the most relaxed licensing standards for teachers in the nation.

“It essentially says whoever you hire will be licensed, and for me that’s a huge step in the wrong direction,” he told the Wisconsin Radio Network.

Another ‘first’ prompting objections within DPI: “for the first time ever, there is no increase in state imposed revenue limits over the next two school years, while voucher and independent charter school payments are increased in each year.”

The provision also would grant a gradual expansion of the statewide voucher program. Initially, participation would be capped at 1 percent of the students in each district, but in 11 years the limit would be lifted.

The expansion would be modeled after the state’s open enrollment system, with tax money following the student. It would increase the amount of per-pupil aid for taxpayer-funded voucher schools to $7,200 per K-8 student and $7,800 per high school student.

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday decried that provision, citing a legislative memo that says the expansion could send up to $800 million in taxpayer money to private voucher schools over the next decade.

According to the memo, prepared for Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, “Although a long-term estimate of payments for incoming statewide choice program pupils is speculative at this time, total payments from 2015-16 to 2024-25 could range from an estimated $600 million to an estimated $800 million.”

Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, called the memo “speculative,” while Democrats accused Republicans of diverting money from public education to benefit private schools.

Republican lawmakers have said throughout the budgeting process that funding K-12 education is a priority for them.

Under their budget motion, public schools would retain a $127 million cut proposed in the governor’s budget for the 2015-16 school year. The following year, they would receive about $70 million more than Walker proposed. But Democrats say the voucher expansion negates any good done by that measure.

Adjunct Life

http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/university/article_3f2b9556-f8d4-11e4-b6d5-73f4bf76cf8d.html

5/13/15  •  By Pat Schneider

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“It’s difficult. You are not guaranteed work, so you are livving under the fear of not having work.” — Michael McDaniel, a part-time instructor at MATC.

Michael McDaniel wrote “What was your first job?” on the board of a classroom at Madison Area Technical College. His students responded with brief accounts of their experiences, setting the stage for reading a story about a first job in “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros.

Friendly and funny, McDaniel worked to help the 10 students identify themes in the coming of age novel about an immigrant girl in Chicago: the scary journey from home into the broader world, the tensions of differing expectations and their clash with reality.

Student Israel Ortiz, a native of Mexico, said he sought out the class after taking an online course with McDaniel.

“I figured it would be interesting to see Latino literature from a U.S. approach, but it was because he was a good teacher more than anything,” Ortiz said.

He always has thought of McDaniel as “professor,” Ortiz said, and was surprised to learn that McDaniel is a part-time instructor who does not know from one semester to the next which classes, if any, he will be teaching.

McDaniel earns less than $8,000 a semester teaching a three-course load, considered full time in academia.

“When you see the amount of time he puts into it …” Ortiz trailed off before adding that at least one other teacher at MATC had talked about his part-time status.

“They are giving full efforts, and not being compensated for it,” Ortiz said.

That’s the sentiment among many of the thousand-plus adjunct instructors who teach thousands of students in Madison, at MATC, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Edgewood College.

The circumstances of these adjunct instructors differ from institution to institution. They may struggle to paste together a sufficient workload to make ends meet, teaching at multiple local institutions. Others earn a comfortable wage, but bristle at the better pay and greater job security given tenured faculty doing similar work. Some profess appreciation at being given the opportunity to bring their professional experience to the college classroom.

All say they love to teach.

The public’s idea of college instructors’ work lives is dramatically different from the reality, at technical colleges, private colleges and public research universities alike, says Mike Kent, a part-time lecturer at MATC since 2005 and president of the MATC Part-time Teachers’ Union.

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“You’re much more likely to receive a course from a teaching assistant or someone hired as part-time instructor – who may not have a desk or a phone number – than you are to have a ‘professor,’” Kent said in his union’s cramped office at MATC’s Truax campus on the city’s east side.

Part-time instructors were teaching half the courses at MATC during a spike in enrollment in 2010-2011, as adults scrambled to re-train after layoffs during the Great Recession, but today teach 30 to 40 percent of classes, Kent said. That rate is reaching 80 percent at some institutions across the higher education spectrum, he said.

In 2013, 46.7 percent of teachers at four-year and two-year higher education institutions across the country were part-time instructional staff, and 14.3 percent were full-time, non-tenure track instructors, according to statistics compiled by the American Association of University Professors. The percentage of instructors greeting college students that year who were tenured professors or on track to become one was 20.4 percent, down from 45.1 percent in 1975.

At MATC, part-time teachers are paid a median $2,600 per three-credit semester class and get no health insurance coverage, Kent said. Full-time instructors, by comparison, earn an average of $92,000 a year, get health insurance and are members of the Wisconsin Retirement System, he said.

Part-timers have no private offices, little contact with colleagues teaching similar courses and many teach at multiple schools, “cobbling together a career, doing as much work as full-time professors for a tiny fraction of the pay,” Kent said. “Their car is their office as they go from campus to campus.”

Adjunct faculty are not given any assurances about which courses they will teach and may get three daytime courses one semester, one evening course the next and none the following semester, Kent said. This unpredictability makes it hard to find and keep other employment to supplement income, he said.

It also means high turnover, with about one-third of part-timers leaving every year, Kent said. And that means a succession of first-time teachers, which erodes the quality of instruction, he said.

For example, Kent taught business statistics for the first time this semester. He spent a lot of time developing the curriculum, he said, but not as much time as he would if he knew he would be teaching the course over a long period of time. And if Kent never teaches business statistics again, he and his students won’t get the benefit of content curated and approaches tested over time.

McDaniel said turnover among instructors discourages student retention because a connection with a supportive instructor helps students stay in school, especially at schools like MATC. He shares an office with other part-time instructors, he said, so often holds critical one-on-one sessions with students in the cafeteria or other common spaces scattered through MATC’s massive main building.

Michael McDaniel, a part-time instructor at MATC, teaches a U.S. Latino literature class at the college.

Teaching at MATC is challenging because the college’s policy of open enrollment results in classes that typically include students with a broad range of abilities. “Many are working a full-time job in addition to trying to be a full-time student, and all the socioeconomic issues plaguing the working class in the United States show up in the classroom,” McDaniel said. So, instruction must be tailored to students’ varied abilities, and interaction adapted to their multiple time constraints. Since most of his students say they want to transfer to four-year institutions, McDaniel says he tries to prepare them to survive and learn.

McDaniel taught three courses at MATC this past semester and hopes he will get three courses in the fall, but he can never be sure. He also will teach a single course this summer.

He estimates he works 60 hours a week for the three courses he is teaching, plus an additional 20 to 30 hours a week for additional functions at the college, in the writing center and as a facilitator for an internal problem solving program.

“It’s difficult,” he said. “You are not guaranteed work, so you are living under the fear of not having work.”

McDaniel, 49, got a master’s degree from Cornell University and completed all but the dissertation towards a Ph.D. in the English department, American Indian Program. He taught in the California state university and community college systems and at the Indian Community School of Milwaukee. He started teaching American Indian literature and English composition at MATC three years ago, and has since added U.S. Latino Literature.

“As an adjunct, you don’t say no,” he said. “You take whatever classes are available.”

To earn more money, he taught a course for the first time this past semester at the UW-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, where he was paid more than twice MATC’s course rate.

Although he has not applied for public aid other than subsidies for health care under the Affordable Care Act, McDaniel said he was eligible for food stamps until he got the contract to teach at UW-Madison and would become eligible again if he loses work at either institution.

“Any individual working as an adjunct must learn to live with economic insecurity,” he said.

McDaniel said he would like to dedicate all his time to students at MATC, but “unfortunately, due to economic conditions and institutional inertia, I must navigate the market forces of higher education,” he said.

The market forces of higher education have pushed compensation for adjunct college instructors so low that they are a target for SEIU, a national labor union best known of late for its “Fight for $15” campaign among fast food workers that seeks to raise pay to $15 an hour. The campaign among adjuncts has set a goal of $15,000 per academic course taught. That’s an aspirational goal as much as a practical one, activists say. But they hope it ignites a conversation about how much money spent at colleges is spent on classroom instruction.

MATC’s part-time teacher’s union, Local 6100 of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, has re-certified twice since the 2011 enactment of Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, which gutted the power of public employee unions.

Collective bargaining for public employees now is restricted under state law to increases in pay tied to inflation, but Kent said he is hopeful of improving conditions under a shared governance model introduced by Jack Daniels, who became MATC president in 2013.

Daniels said compensation – pay and working conditions – is the focus of shared governance councils that will develop proposals to be brought to him for his recommendation to the college’s board of trustees. The college, meanwhile, has been cutting expenses to avoid a shortfall in its operating budget for next year.

He was not hopeful about offering adjuncts guarantees in what courses they will teach.

“Adjuncts across the country aren’t guaranteed jobs – they teach based on need,” Daniels said. “But I don’t know of any college institution that could function well without adjuncts. They are a vital segment of our employee base and we’re looking for ways to improve their working conditions.”

One change might be in the way part-time and full-time statuses are defined, he said.

The number of instructional staff, as opposed to faculty, has risen sharply at UW-Madison over the past 25 years, mirroring a national trend. Today there are nearly as many instructional academic staff teaching students as there are faculty members, not to mention the graduate student teaching assistants who work with faculty and can be an undergraduate’s closest point of contact.

In 2014, there were 1,762 instructional academic staff at UW-Madison, compared to 2,085 faculty members, according to UW-Madison’s office of Academic Planning and Institutional Research. Instructional staff was up 20 percent from a decade ago and more than 160 percent from 25 years ago. The number of faculty in contrast, has dropped by just over 5 percent since 1989, inching up some 1.5 percent in the last decade.

The university also employs many additional academic staff who conduct research, perform administrative tasks and fulfill functions other than course instruction under a variety of titles.

Hiring academic staff instead of faculty is a way to keep costs down, said Scott Mellor, a distinguished lecturer in Scandinavian studies.

“We are cheaper than faculty, and that can be a problem,” he said.

Mellor holds the highest rank in UW-Madison’s complicated system of instructional staff classifications. His job carries a salary that, at minimum, must be 85 percent of a professor’s minimum salary under university policy, he said.

The average lecturer in my department makes $55,000, and the average professor closer to $90,000. … I see how that is a problem keeping talented people, and it concerns me deeply.” — Scott Mellor, lecturer in Scandinavian studies at UW-Madison

Mellor has a Ph.D. from UW-Madison in advanced folklore studies and has taught as a lecturer there since 1999. He worked his way up through the levels of lecturer and senior lecturer and was made distinguished lecturer in 2009 in a merit selection process that looks a lot like what is required to get tenure, he said.

Instructional staff start work at the university with no job security, and may be hired to teach a course on a semester-to-semester basis. Campus policy prohibits staff from teaching in the same department for more than three successive years on that basis, however. Many staff members then are contracted to work on a fixed-term renewable basis. Some get “rolling horizon” appointments that run one, two or three years and require prescribed periods of notice if they are not renewed.

Mellor started on a staff, rather than faculty, track because his spouse was a faculty member and the university had not yet developed its policy of accommodating employment of two-faculty couples, he said. And educational backgrounds between instructional staff and faculty are typically very similar, he said. Instructional staff are not required to conduct research, as tenured faculty are, he said. Some do, however.

His online resume lists books, articles, conference presentations and invited lectures, yet after 16 years on staff he earns a few thousand more than the $50,736 minimum for academic staff of his rank. That is a common circumstance for instructional staff, but faculty don’t linger so near the bottom of the pay range, he said.

“The average lecturer in my department makes $55,000, and the average professor is closer to $90, 000,” Mellor said.

Full-time instructional staff at UW-Madison get the same health care and pension benefits as faculty.

The relationship between faculty and academic staff varies among departments, Mellor said, but it is quite collegial in his, with academic staff having a voice in many departmental policy deliberations. Mellor is concerned, however, that as the number of instructional staff rises on campus, he has begun to hear complaints about being underpaid.

“I see how that is a problem keeping talented people, and it concerns me deeply,” he said.

An instructional staff member in languages at UW-Madison, who did not want to be identified, said she is facing stalled pay increases and that staff is not well respected or consulted on major decisions in her department.

Staff are treated as lower-class citizens, she said.

Faculty get preference in course assignments, including summer school, a potential source of extra income, she said.

“Most faculty don’t need to teach over the summer; they should give consideration to others making half as much as they do.”

She would move on to another institution, but the job market is bad in her field, she said, and starting on a tenure track now would mean a cut in pay for several years.

A lecturer in the College of Letters and Science said he was grateful to professors for helping him get a job at UW, but that pay for lower-ranked teaching staff is “exploitative.” Lecturers by policy must be paid 75 percent of a tenure-track instructor of the same level, but many have less than full-time appointments, which sharply cuts their earnings.

“I don’t think it’s ethical at all, the pay scale is ludicrous,” said the lecturer, who asked that his name not be used. “We’re constantly in limbo, trying to leverage ourselves. It’s an incredibly precarious position.”

Mellor credited Chancellor Rebecca Blank with using a “critical compensation fund” to fill some of the more obvious pay gaps, but some $90 million cuts looming for the campus in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget next year likely will make further progress there impossible, he said. Staff members, under the terms of their employment, are much more vulnerable to layoffs, he said.

“But when you look at the economic reality of the country, there are a lot of people a lot worse off,” he said. And Mellor is hopeful policy changes to improve the lot of university staff can be made under a new human resources system, independent from the state’s system, that goes into effect on July 1.

Karl Scholz, dean of the College of Letters and Science, said UW-Madison doesn’t exploit its staff.

“In the higher education press, you see all sorts of articles about the exploitative relationships between folks poorly compensated teaching and universities and colleges leveraging that to cut corners. I don’t think that happens at UW-Madison and I don’t think it will happen for the foreseeable future,” he said.

The phenomenon in urban areas where a Ph.D. strings together four or five jobs at different universities is not a model that characterizes the commitment to providing a high quality education that guides his college, he said.

“I don’t think stringing together jobs to make ends meet is good for the person or good for the students,” he said.

What’s more, the Madison area doesn’t have enough higher education institutions to make that scenario likely, he said.

Instructional staff by and large is paid less than faculty, but they are not the only ones whose compensation is stalled, Scholz said. “It’s been a pretty lean decade.”

He said he is hopeful that the university’s new human resources system will offer great flexibility to address a number of job compensation and title issues. But increasing compensation across the university is a challenge, he said. “Our faculty salaries are well below our public university peers – our teaching assistant stipends are crazy low, compared to institutions we compete with for graduate students.”

Scholz said his college is working hard to mitigate the impact of coming budget cuts.

“I hope to avoid layoffs, and instead eliminate positions by not hiring to fill vacancies on both the staff and faculty sides,” he said. As of May 5, 92 vacant positions were cut in Letters and Science, including 48 faculty members and 18 academic staff. No layoffs had been scheduled.

Shad Wenzlaff was a traveling adjunct who focused on a single employer a few years ago to ease stress in his work life.

Wenzlaff had stopped work on a Ph.D. in art history at UW-Madison without completing his dissertation because he could no longer live on a teaching assistant’s stipend, he said.

“I don’t see how anybody at UW lives on TA’s income. And I had taken out some student loans, so of course I was in debt,” said Wenzlaff, 42. “I made the decision that I couldn’t live in the poverty neighborhood in Madison. I refused to do that.”

He recalled, at age 30, looking around at the relationship problems and social issues fellow graduate students were grappling with and concluding, “this is not a quality lifestyle.”

The decision not to complete his Ph.D. slammed some doors.

“I ended up being an adjunct who just floats,” Wenzlaff said.

He taught classes at several colleges in the region – three in a single semester at one point – until he decided he could no longer juggle courses, students and policies. Wenzlaff now teaches art history only at Edgewood College, where he also directs student research part time. The teaching and administrative functions together make him a full-time staff member and eligible for benefits.

Edgewood is a private, Catholic liberal arts college founded by Dominican sisters that espouses values like justice, compassion and community as part of its mission.

“Our values call us to do a number of things, and I think that is the basis of some of the things we have been doing the last few years” to improve conditions for adjunct faculty, said Dean Pribbenow, vice president for academic affairs at the college.

Edgewood has about 300 instructors, with just over 100 full-time tenure-track faculty, Pribbenow said. The number of part-time faculty varies, but in the fall 2014 semester, the college employed about 170 part-time adjunct faculty, he said.

Part-time faculty are used to teach some of the multiple sections of basic courses, but also to provide special expertise, especially in the college’s professional schools, Pribbenow said. On rare occasion, a “community lecturer” may be paired with an instructor of record to share their unique life experience, he said.

Pribbenow would not say how much adjuncts are paid, but said improving the experience of part-time instructors has been the focus of faculty committees. Over the past several years, the college has moved part-time faculty toward full-time teaching loads when possible and worked to promote them to more highly paid lecturer positions, he said.

“This is a national problem and we face the same challenges as many other institutions,” Pribbenow said. “We recognize it, we’re trying to do some things, and we know we have some room to go in that area.”

Wenzlaff said that as a senior lecturer, he has health insurance and retirement benefits and works in a positive culture.

“It’s the Dominican philosophy – it’s really beneficent,” he said. “I feel like I can respect what I’m doing at Edgewood.”

Wenzlaff supplements his income by teaching piano in his private studio. He enjoys being able to engage both his art and music talents, “but I wish I didn’t have to work so much,” he said.

Percy Brown, director of equity and student achievement for the Middleton Area School District, was an adjunct instructor for the first time this year in the School of Education at Edgewood, where he also is pursuing his doctoral degree.

“I provide a unique experience by being an African-American male in education,” said Brown, 41, who has a background in cultural competence training and grew up in Madison attending schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District. “To tell my success story and offer that lens is very useful.”

The students in one class last fall were all international students from Saudi Arabia, but those in other classes were nearly all white, Brown said. As the students train to teach in public schools where students are increasingly racially diverse, the college would do a disservice to them if it did not prepare them to meet the needs of those students, he said.

“I’ve received a lot of positive feedback for helping raise awareness of these issues before they walk into a classroom,” he said. “And it’s allowed Edgewood to diversify its staff.”

Brown comes from a family committed to social justice and that is a guiding influence in his life, so the compensation for teaching a college course or two goes beyond money and professional development, he said.

“I’m grateful to Edgewood College for calling on me,” Brown said.

What a profound honor, privilege, & grace in this life, to be entrusted, even momentarily, with the temporary care, safety, and education of other peoples' children. "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -John Dewey, "Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought." -Napoleon Hill, "What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the [individual] who instructs the rising generation." -Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Divinatione