A colleague of mine was recently featured in the local news. She’s a lecturer at San Jose State University. She has an advanced degree in English. She teaches part-time, technically, but only because we teach on an FTE or Full-Time-Equivalent basis. This basis does not include work done outside the classroom such as prep and grading. Most with her FTE (.8, which means she works “32” out of “40” hours) put in at least 50 if not 60 hours a week of work. Because teaching is considered a professional occupation as defined by the Department of Labor, we are exempt from normal overtime rules, even if we make below the salary threshold. Teaching is one of the few professions in which you are punished for not working off the clock. All of this is prelude to the fact that my colleague is homeless and living in her car with her husband and two dogs.
The cost of living in the Bay Area is such that a two bedroom apartment can go for as little as $2,000 a month or as high as $5,000 a month. My wife and I are paying $2,000 a month for a one bedroom apartment, just so we can live in between our two places of employment. At the lower ends of the pay scale for adjunct faculty in the California State University system, a lecturer makes maybe $600 to $700 a class each month, after taxes. That means a take home of $2,400 to $2,800 a month. I’m fortunate that I’m in the $2,800 a month category and that my wife also works. However, for someone on an income of only $2,400 a month, paying rent is an extravagance. My colleague is closer to $2,400 a month; her husband is unemployed. She teaches just as many classes as I do. She works just as hard as anyone else in the system, yet she cannot meet her most basic needs on a salary that has grown only 5% in the last twelve years, and that’s only after an adjustment made two years ago to address the 7% depreciation we experienced after the economy tanked.
What’s sad is that it’s not that the CSU can’t afford to pay its lecturers more. It’s just that it would rather pay for its administrative bloat than for its mission of quality education. Having a talented teacher so dedicated to her students that she grades in the passenger seat of her car helps no one in the end. The cost of living in California and the Bay Area especially is ridiculous. That we have homeless professionals is a travesty. We should be better than this. We must be better than this.