Stan Geiger

Fragments

Maybe I should’ve left them Texicans alone. I think they read my blog and went into Stillwater a little pissed!

Was it Texican prowess or Poke ineptitude? I guess that’s the question. I vote for the latter. Five turnovers, a shanked field goal, penalties galore and dropped passes won’t git ‘er done---not even in a fancy stadium. The Pokes are rapidly becoming the Chicago Cubs of college football. Hey, wait ‘til next year!

There’s a problem in the land of the Pokes. What’s the fix?

Well, the prevailing wisdom dictates pay raises for the coaches. Let’s hike ticket prices, raise tuition and dip into the tax coffers for a few more bucks so the millionaire coaches can make more money. Then maybe, just maybe, the Pokes will actually be able to win when it counts.

Do ya really think that’s the way it works?

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I caught a news blurb on KOTV the other night. It said TU’s prez, Stedman Upham, is the third-highest-paid in the nation. He is pulling down about $1.5 million this year. That’s just what’s on the surface, of course. Who knows what else flows his way in the form of benefits. You know, the free house and car, insurance, travel, retirement and the like.

What’s in your wallet?

According to the Princeton Review, annual undergraduate tuition at TU has topped $25,000. That’s a cool hundred grand for a four-year degree---not counting books and room and board.

There are roughly 3,000 undergrads enrolled. Would you care to venture a guess as to how much student debt those undergrads are sitting on right now? Pick a number. Let’s say $50,000 per student, on average. That would put the figure at $150 million.

There is a lot of criticism of excesses and inequities in the corporate world. Much of it comes from liberal educators. They can see splinters in the eyes of others, but the chunks of lumber sticking out of their own go unnoticed.

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I was watching one of those network morning shows the other day, I don’t recall which one. I find it hard to maintain focus while watching those shows. They are on the air for about two minutes then it’s off for another round of commercials. “We’ll be right back” is the most commonly uttered phrase on those shows. And then, when they come back, you get the same weather report you’ve already seen a dozen times.

Anyway, as the show was headed for a break, a placard was put up on the screen listing the five best jobs to have, according to a survey. (I presume jobs like CEO, university president and coach were excluded because they weren’t on the list). The job of college professor came in third. I was not surprised.

Back in the mid ‘90s, I spent a couple of years clerking in an administrative office at the downtown campus of Tulsa Community College. From there, I got a good look at the life of a college teacher.

Fulltime---so-called “fulltime”---instructors had a choice between a 9-month contract and an 11-month contract. The difference was the summer semester. Most went with the 9-month deal. That gave them the option to teach in the summer or take it off. If one chose to teach in the summer, he or she got paid extra on a separate contract.

Fulltime instructors on 9-month contracts were required to teach 15 credit hour’s worth of classes in the fall and spring semesters. In other words, they were required to spend 3 hours a day in a classroom. In addition to that, as I recall, they were required to spend 12.5 hours per week in their offices in case a student wanted to drop by with a question. So a fulltime instructor’s workweek consisted of 27.5 hours---with nearly half of that being spent in their offices doing little or nothing.

Long about 2 or 3 o’clock of any given afternoon, I could walk the halls of the building and see long rows of dark and locked offices (they had glass doors). The teachers were gone. I mean I could’ve thrown a dead cat through the place and hit nary a teacher.

The fall semester started about August 15. I think the teachers were required to come in a week before that to get their stuff together before classes began. Labor Day brought with it a 3-day weekend. Thanksgiving brought with it a 5-day weekend. Once final grades were turned in, long about December 10, the teachers were free to split. They weren’t required to return for a month. The spring semester fired up in mid January. In March came a week off for spring break. On or about May 10, after turning in final grades, the 9-monthers were done for the year.

As I recall, starting pay for the job was about $35,000 a year. Judging from my studies of budgets from the day, I’d say the average was somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000. According to the faculty newsletter, the highest-paid 9-monther at the time was making $55,000.

You understand, the above numbers are 12 or 13 years old. TCC’s budget back then was about $50 million a year. It has doubled since then. So one might well be able to take my figures and double them to get an estimate of what a teaching job at the college pays today.

Insurance was part of the deal. Retirement benefits were beyond belief.

There was the Oklahoma Teachers’ Retirement System pension fund, of course. There was also the TCC Supplemental Retirement System---the college’s own pension fund. And, if that wasn’t enough, a teacher once told me of “TSAs.” Each year, a teacher could put 1 percent of pay toward a tax-deferred annuity. The college matched that with 3 percent of pay. For every dollar put in by the teacher the college put in 3, in other words. Throw in Social Security, and the college was contributing to 4 separate retirement vehicles for teachers.

As a side note, whatever teachers got the administrators got more.

There were teachers on the payroll at TCC with nothing more than a bachelor’s-level education. Most had master’s degrees. A handful had doctorates. The teaching crew, in other words, was not comprised of super-educated geniuses armed with special knowledge or skills. They were just a group of average goobers. They couldn’t even call themselves “professors.” I think the official job title was “associate professor.”

I understand what I just laid out consists of dated information. But I feel comfortable in throwing it out because I’m sure if anything has changed for TCC teachers it has changed in their favor.

So take the information about what “associate professors” at a 2-school were getting way back in the mid ‘90s, then transfer it to a real university where actual “professors” work and try to imagine the deal they have in today’s world. Then go get really drunk before you write that next tuition check.

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