December 11, 2022
I don\’t blame the UC (University of California) researchers and TAs (teaching assistants) who are currently striking in the slightest (I\’ve been there and done that!). They are at the bottom of an extremely bountiful food chain. They are like the dogs in the medieval court that get thrown the scraps after the lords and ladies are done feasting– and must be satisfied with bone and gristle.
And who does the bulk of the work with the paying students at a university? Usually the aforementioned TAs and researchers. A number of lecturers and professors–who still either enjoy teaching or can\’t get the necessary and sufficient help from their departments often end up hiring their own personal TAs to help get the grading done.
Most colleges/universities contain any number of the following bloated positions:
Board of Trustees Member(s), Chancellors, Provosts, Presidents, Vice Presidents, Deans and Chairs and a host of other positions that are much better paid than the people who do all the work. These privileged elite drink from the top of the trough where the pure, clean water comes in — and the proletariat get the slough.
I am reminded of the famous \”Greed is Good\” scene from Wall Street — with Gordon Gekko talking about the 33 vice presidents (of the company he was rescuing) who were all paid $200,000 for doing nothing: most of the university bureaucracy I just mentioned does little to nothing to warrant their large (in comparison to those in the trenches) salaries.
The Cal State system — an administrative hierarchy I am somewhat familiar with — sees each one of its 21 presidents earning over $400,000 with some presidents earning up to $600,000 and more! And if they are forced to leave (for \’bad\’ behavior) — they still get a nice severance package.
I remember having such a job when working for LACOE (the Los Angeles County Office of Education) where — to appease this irate employee (that\’s a story for another day) — I was given an office, a gas stipend and an $80,000-a-year job and all I had to say to earn my bread was: I had been in a meeting or was going to one. I\’m pretty sure most of the university administrative hierarchy plays this game as well.
The administrative hierarchy is where the fat is — and yes, this is a classic Marxian example of the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie! These useless administrative positions should either be cut (like fat from the meat) — or cooked until the juices have dried up — which would see these administrative positions with vastly tempered pay scales. These \”jobs\” are NOT 9-to-5 jobs — there is a good deal of down time AND plenty of lunchtime available to the university brass.
Most football programs make a profit for their university — we are even seeing athletes get paid now. If there is a surplus in athletic monies — why not redirect some of this to the people who teach the athletes and curtail the massive salaries offered to the coaches?! But, gasp, this solution smacks of socialism.
What exquisite irony — that the institutions that allegedly promulgate socialism are so deeply immersed in capitalism. Well, Marx\’s conflict theory is playing out — as we see a revolution by the disenfranchised front line workers against the university elite!