In case you're unfamiliar with the lingo, a 4-4 means you teach 4 sections (usually means 2 but can mean 4 different classes) a semester, both semesters of an academic year. Let's talk about teaching load and the crime institutions are committing. (1/?) #AcademicTwitter https://twitter.com/megpillow/status/1386904329362329602

Hypothetical situation: you're a 4-4 biology instructor (they don't say faculty or tenure-track, so presume not) at public uni. You're lucky: you're teaching only 2 courses, 2 sections each, all lecture. TAs are teaching lab. However, 1 course is a large majors course. (2/?)

Lectures are about an hour, so 4 hours a week, plus office hours for each course, so 8 hours. You'll get a handful of students at office hours, but also emailing you at all other hours, asking for help/extensions/letters of rec. Add 4 hours for this student correspondence. (3/?)

Before the term even starts, you design the labs. You're using the same handbook everyone's used forever for the majors course (score) but you still have to adjust it. The other topic is new, you have to make it from scratch. (4/?)

Every week, you have to meet with the prep room and your TAs to make sure everything is ready. You'll also have to handle any squabbles, student issues that arise from lab, equipment malfunctions. Add 6 hours. (5/?)

Lecture prep: if you're making the presentation material from scratch, 4 hours+. Less if you've done it before, but it still needs adjusting. One topic's new, the other isn't. Split the difference, add 6 hours. (6/?)

Exams! You're giving two midterms and a final. Your majors class has 150 students in each section, but you can do scantrons. Writing a 50 Q majors exam (can't use past exam, students put it online): spread over the term, +1 hr/week.

The topics class has only 30 students/section but requires mechanisms and essays. Writing, spread over term: +1 hr/week. Don't forget you need to print or publish these somewhere (for online courses) and deal with those hiccups: add another hour. (7/?)

GRADING. Only your majors class has TAs, who can help with scantrons, but you have to go over all of them, enter them in the gradebook, and upload. Did you also have weekly quizzes or other gradeable work? Probably. For the majors course, add 3 hours a week grading.

Your topics course: no TAs and all those essays, plus you're doing in-class writing assignments to check. Add 3 hours average/week and many coffees (and probably wine) to get through 60 sets of more intense grading.

Now we get to administrative. How many (Zoom) meetings a week do you have to attend? There's dept. seminar, dept. meeting, meeting w/ chair, required trainings, convocations, etc. etc. etc. Just for the basics, add 4 hours a week minimum.

Part of a society? Chair a committee? HAHAHA oh you poor sap, add another 2 hours a week.

"I don't have to do that to have a job!" you scoff. Oh yes, yes you do, you untenured sap. Community and academic society involvement is pretty much required, ESPECIALLY if you're not doing research, speaking of which...

We're at 39 hours a week already, and what I haven't told you is that I'm presuming you have teaching experience, that you're not brand new. If you are, x1.5 for learning. And remember, you're lucky, teaching the same lecture twice. Next term, you may have 4 topics to juggle.

Did you want to do research? Your instructor position gives you no money to do that. You will have to apply for funding. And set up a lab. And run projects. And train assistants. We're not even going to get into that, but it's another full time job.

You could argue that's what you do with your summers, because it's a 9 month contract, but you need to get that money first. You may also have to work summers to get that funding to run a lab on the side.

All of that aside, even if this was 40 hours a week and you were living on this for the year, it works out to be $20/hr. For a professor. With higher education debts. $42K doesn't cover my loans.

It's highway robbery, and adjuncts have it worse. It's not unusual for an adjunct to be asked to teach a full lecture course for $3K for a semester. Teaching a 4-4, that's $24K. No benefits.

I. Love. Teaching. I'm great at it and find so much joy in it. I can't afford to teach right now until I've got research money to offset. I'll get back to it one day, come hell or high water, but that's the honest situation in higher ed right now. #AcademicTwitter