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From: smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: teacher's don't need more pay - (nf)
Message-ID: <946@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Nov-83 21:56:49 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.946
Posted: Mon Nov 21 21:56:49 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Nov-83 04:07:33 EST
References: <836@ucbcad.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 54

FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME --- FLAME

First, in preface, I am a long-time computer professional and
researcher who is now a `teacher' (of music), presently at MIT.  With
19 years experience with computers, I may be somewhat of an anomaly in
liberal arts education -- usually, people migrate the other way -- but
I claim a particular right to comment, as if one needs a right to write
to Usenet...

Upon finishing graduate school I took employment as an assistant
professor in music at the University of Wisconsin with a starting
salary about 40% of offers from industry.  I do not wish here to argue
the benefits of working in academia vs. the `real' world, but no matter
how committed one is to teaching, the attraction of higher pay is a
constant temptation.  With a manufacturing and agricultural economy,
Wisconsin had a hard time during the past recession.  A recession cuts
the tax base, so state funds for education were under extreme
pressure.  I hear from former colleagues that UW avoided making faculty
cuts this past year only by putting a freeze on all faculty salaries.

My argument is economic:  I will not presume that the economy hinges on
music theory, but at UW-Milwaukee a few years ago *four* computer
science faculty positions were vacant -- no competent people could be
found to fill them at the offered salary.  Of course, the governor and
state legislature spouted great torrents about how committed they were
to upgrading the medium-industry smokestack economy to `high tech.'
Yet, it was up to a music professor to boot the first Unix system on
campus.  (Not that Unix is so high-tech, but things are relative. :-)
Suppose the University were to --- let us exagerate --- quadruple [!]
professorial salaries in critical technologies.  Superbly qualified
candidates would be fighting for those same positions.  The general
`worker' population five or ten years from now would be far more suited
to high tech, and salaries of those workers would be far greater.  I am
no economist, but I am certain that any reasonable investment in
education by a government would pay back handsome interest in income
and corporate taxes within, say, ten years.

Teaching is the great cultural amplifier.  No price [within reasonable
bounds] is too high that we couldn't afford substantial capital gains
on our investment.*  The real problem, as I see it, is that it takes
more than four years, sometimes *much* more, for the investment to
begin paying.  Politicians in America are typically elected for 2, 4,
or 6 year terms.

Lest this flame seem to criticise my former colleagues at UW, I must
say that I found them to be both dedicated and absolutely competent.
However, they labored then (and I suspect continue) with entirely
insufficient facilities and support for the task at hand.

 * - A paraphrase from a brilliant trumpeter who once said:
     "No note is too high to be taken down an octave!"

Steve Haflich
MIT Experimental Music Studio