Ask the Piss Poor Prof–MBA and teaching online

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One of my readers asked the following:

Can I ask your advice?  I am a full-time working mom, but all I really want to do is stay at home with my baby (and future children).  I am working on my MBA now and have 7 years corporate experience in Business, Finance and Accounting, but no real teaching experience.

I am thinking of taking a year off to go to school full-time (online) and finish my MBA.  After that, do you think: (1)anyone will hire me with just an MBA and no teaching experience and (2) that I’ll be able to make $1000-$1500 (net) a month?

Obviously I don’t expect to replace my corporate salary by teaching online, but I just need to make enough to cover some of our household expenses and have a little extra spending money.

In my head, this sounds like the perfect plan for me, but after reading some of your posts I’m beginning to think teaching online is not all that wonderful as I think it is.

I will state up front that my experience with Business Colleges has stayed mainly in Business and Technical Writing courses.  I have not taught/taken business courses myself, so my advice will stay more generic than you may like.

First, what specific (make a list of 5) courses will you want to teach?  Are those courses actually taught online?

I would love to teach American Literature.  I have not, though, been able to nearly enough in my career.  Why?  Because English Departments get the bulk of their traffic not in Am Lit, but in Composition (which is usually a Core Requirement).  So, I have taught a lot of Composition courses over the years.

Find out your version of a Comp. course.    You may also begin researching colleges that teach these courses.  I would, without knowing a lot about your desires/goals, recommend the University of Phoenix or a similar school that focuses on the evening/weekend full-time worker who is taking courses part-time.  The U of P especially  prides itself on employing “working practitioners” who bring in business experience.  Your history, with them, may serve you well.

In any case, emphasize your experience, willing to be flexible with time (logging in requirements, etc.), and eagerness.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

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Career Advice: Can You Afford to Be an Adjunct? – Inside Higher Ed

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About three weeks ago Scott Jaschik contacted me about writing a piece for InsideHigher Ed.  I wondered if he had read any of my more recent postings.

The linked article is my first submission to be published in quite a while.  It feels good.  I think I said some accurate (if not a little depressing) things.

What do you think?

I will be working my way through the comments over the next little bit.

Write On: Carl Hiaasan

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One of the new additions to this blog will be a periodic nod of approval toward some writer I am/have reading/read. Todays’s thumbs up goes to Carl Hiaasan. I have made it through four of his books–not the one mentioned here–and while I have read better stylists, Hiaasan is a good and consistent read.

The book to the right is the most recent I have read.  The protagonist is a struggling reporter whose adherence to his ethics/cause finally sees him through.  He also clubs an attacker with a frozen, dead iguana.

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Carl Hiaasen
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Keyboard Cat

All the Justice You Can Afford

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One of the activities that I have been engaged in the last 6 months, while not working, has been to push forward on a medical malpractice lawsuit.

Some problems, though, occur along the way.  Our legal counsel pulled out because of a bar issue (the Bar had an issue with his hitting the bar and driving), so we are proceeding pro se (on our own).

In order to file, though, we have to present letters of merits from fellow physicians, which once you begin looking at the whole process, seems downright unfair.  I have to pay a medical professional anywhere from $1000-$5000 for her opinion on if there are enough merits to my case to be heard.  That is, I can’t even file without them.  These costs (which go up per professional) are usually fronted by the law firm, which hopes to recoup on the settlement.

But, what if someone is poor, or without counsel, or both.  We are.  We are also, effectively, barred from seeking redress in court.  Where is the due process?

I will keep you informed.

If you know of a physician who might provide an affidavit of merit, I would sure like to talk things over with her.

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Medical Residents: the adjuncts of the health profession

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“Adopting new restrictions on the work hours of physicians in training would impose a substantial new cost on the nation’s 8,500 physician training programs,” said lead author Dr. Teryl K. Nuckols, an internist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “There is no obvious way to pay for these changes so that’s one major issue that must be addressed.”

The article, as linked to by InsideHigherEd, is really only “published” by the Rand organization itself.

Saying that, the article/study does point out the entrenched work model, no doubt modeled in graduate programs, where the young student takes on the bulk of an institutions workload in order to protect the payment model of those who have achieved status–professional hazing.  Society is already “paying” for such a model.

The quote, which notice that the “lead researcher” is himself an internist (adjuncts calling for reform?), awkwardly worded, points out higher costs–2 million per teaching hospital.

Take a peak behind these costs: teaching hospitals service, on the whole, lower income populations and have a higher ratio of patients/doctor/nurse.  The real question, like with most colleges, should be “do those who can redress care enough about those affected (they are almost always two different groups) to do anything?”

Probably not.

via RAND | News Release | Limiting Work Hours For Medical Residents Could Cost $1.6 Billion Annually.

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Excuse me, can you spare a Humanities Chair?

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[Edited after a snarky commenter pointed out my grammar slippage]

[Written in response to InsideHigherEd's article Top Ph.D. Programs, Shrinking.]
I think that the whole tenor of the discussion misses the economic point.  Yes, there are too many PhDs in the market, which facilitates contingent hiring, which waters down the average salary.  Yes, shrinking the incoming pool MAY change this situation in twenty years.

However, to keep discussing department/institutional finances as if these departments/institutions were viable on the open market is patently dishonest.  There are few, without State or endowed subsidy, who would survive on their own.  This is not to say that there isn’t a need nor a societal benefit to the continuation of Humanities.  That, for me, is the assumed.  But, to even consider that a department should pay their own way, either through their students or through their positions, is wrongheaded.

What we need are more sponsors, not less fewer students and not less fewer full time positions.  We need deep pockets to pony up positions, to endow more chairs and to subsidize more studies, art or books.  Sure, there is a sense of beholding to the Medici model, but it is, upon reflection, more accurate than saying that the Southern Immigrant Languages Department at Snooty U has reduced its incoming class as a way to balance its budget (which has been balanced in part by the use of contingent labor for decades).

Get a clue.  Get a donor.

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News: The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job – Inside Higher Ed

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The growth in these jobs — and the decline in tenure-track positions — was found in all sectors of higher education, but was most apparent at community colleges. However, one of the most notable shifts was at public four-year colleges and universities, where over the period studied, tenured and tenure-track faculty members went from being a slight majority to less than 40 percent of faculty members. At the end point of the AFT study, tenured and tenure-track faculty members do not make a majority of faculties in any sector.

via News: The Disappearing Tenure-Track Job – Inside Higher Ed.

This is not a new trend, nor are these numbers surprising.  If you were surprised, you haven’t been paying attention.

It it not, though, about “justice” or fairness at all.  What is at stake are the very core notions of what it means to be at university.  Professors are the highest caste in our educational hierarchy.  They even wear creepy robes with hoods at the ceremonies.  It is they who attend the wine/cheese meet-n-greats with new candidates, bored with the current crop of untouchables.  Of course they want to hire from without–every one likes new blood.

The real bemoaning should be centered on the creation (or at least full disclosure of) of full-time positions, which given the overburdened market (see full disclosure call) has no incentive to create.  So, study computer science for a job, study the Humanities for a life as a missionary.

Marines and Horse Manure

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As I have indicated in the past, my brother-in-law is a US Marine.  Today he boarded a plane to take him to Afghanistan.  Although we have known for a while (he has been enlisted for about a year), his going is still hard.

My wife, his sister, waited for his final call all morning (a three hour time difference playing into the mix), and when it came it was short: “I am waiting to get on the bus.  I will see you in 7-8 months.”

I thought my wife had taken the news of the call really well, telling him to be careful and to keep in touch.  So, as a way to distract, we went to the local fair grounds where they rent out horse stables to some local harness racers.  It is also a good place to find free manure/compost.  With little brother’s truck, we for another load compost: really me and a pitchfork working to fill up the truck while Lovely Wife and Pookie (now eight years old) go to talk to the horses.

The manure is housed in a concrete box that has one end open.  Situated on the side of a hill it resembles a walk-out basement.  The top of the closed end is level with the ground at the end of the barn, which makes for an easy wheelbarrow ride straight out and into the concrete bunker.  By pulling into the opposite, open end, I can scoop and go with relative ease.

I was doing just this, straddling the open tailgate with knee-high waders, shorts and a t-shirt with one foot on the truck and the other sinking into the compost.  The truck was about half full when I noticed that Lovely Wife was standing at the top, crying.  From my vantage point, my head was level with her feet as she stood just back from the ever-crumbling edge (I was pulling from the center of the pile–it is where the best heat occurs).

“My little brother is going off to war,” she says.  ”I tried to be brave.  No one wants to hear their sister cry when they are going away.”

“I’m sorry, honey,”  I say.  ”I really am.  I would give you a hug, but I am standing in horse shit, with compost fumes and dust floating up.”

That pretty much summed up our morning.

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The Mowers

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You can tell that Spring/Summer is finally here as the yard is begging for its first mowing of the season.  The long winter of discontent is, with the firing up of the little two-stroke, finally over.

I wonder if the summer will be as bad as the winter?

Do you “own” your course?

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Here is an interesting question for all instructors…do you own your course?

That is, if you were to leave and teach at another institution, do you have the right to take everything with you (lecture notes, slides, illustrations, handouts, gradebooks, online materials, BlackBoard gradebooks, etc.)?

If you answer yes, have you shopped your expertise around?

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