Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Friday, December 15, 2017
weekend thirsty
Do you get paid too much or embezzle from your school? Do your colleagues?
Isn’t how much one gets paid supposed to be related to how much value one creates? I think I can make a good case that I give my students a good value for their money. I certainly have a good record in helping to place my students in well-paid, interesting jobs that make use of what I did for them. Can the university president, the MANY administrators who work under him, or the football coach, all of whom make MUCH more than what I make, make this claim plausibly?
I am always very careful not to take home anything that belongs to my university. I could easily do so, partly because almost no one at my university knows doodley-squat about my field of science---but then knowing this is precisely what my job is. Another reason is that, like many proffies, I don't have such a sharp dividing line between work and the rest of my life.
I just got an exercise in this during the past week. I have a lab that looks like my grandfather Viktor’s: the kind of place where one false move will get 4,000 volts through you. We’re now getting over twice as many physics majors as we did ten years ago, so next semester my lab will be crowded with students, who need to work there. I therefore spent the last week clearing out the lab, as much as possible: both throwing out old, obsolete equipment that hasn’t been used for many years, and taking home personal stuff that has accumulated there.
Even if old, obsolete equipment no longer works at all, and even if it did the prospect that it would ever be used again is negligible since science is about doing new things, I am not allowed simply to throw this stuff in the trash. This is because it doesn’t belong to me: it belongs to the university, so I need to do the proper paperwork and get approval before disposing of anything. Some of this equipment can be hazardous, and needs to be disposed of properly, anyway. I don’t have any radioactive material, but a colleague of mine in medical physics has to be even more careful when disposing of old junk.
Personal stuff belonging to me that accumulated in my lab included a tent and a sleeping bag. Some years ago, as a community outreach program, important since we are a public university, I used to go to star parties hosted by the local amateur astronomy club. During weekends, we would bring telescopes up to dark sites in the mountains, far from city lights, and do digital photography of astronomical objects, useful for education. It was great fun.
When my Mom heard about this, she gave me a tent and a sleeping bag, since I’d been sleeping during the day in one of the university vehicles I’d driven up there. I did get some use of the tent and sleeping bag, but stopped when we built our remote observatory. The remote observatory obviated the need for camping, since my students and I operate it mainly by remote control over the internet. We go up to it once a month to do maintenance, but there’s no longer any need to stay up there for more than 24 hours, since we’re no longer hauling heavy equipment.
So, the tent and the sleeping bag sat there, occupying volume in the lab for years. Since they were my personal property, I got to take them home. I also get to take home else anything I paid for (or was given to me) that I use in my work, such as books. I do NOT get to take home any items that were paid for by the university, or paid for by grants awarded to the university, since those items belong to the university. It’s good to be careful about that.
My answers are pretty much the same as Frod’s, but without the excitement of telescopes.
Do I get paid too much? Not really – fair for what I bring into the joint in terms of students and funding.
Batshit U. tracks its proffies’ purchases depending on what they cost. There’s no checking of things under 10 dollars, except that we need to prove we actually bought the item. 50 bucks means it needs to be in your office for the 12 months after an item was bought, and 100 dollars means you need to keep it for 5 years and have on hand any time your office is audited. I’ve been audited twice in the past 10 years.
I don’t know of anyone who embezzles, but I suspect it happened in the past as we have an interesting list of things we can’t buy (including wall clocks, Christmas cards, & fountain pens).
Paper is a gray area here. If you take whole reams of paper home for your own use, you know you shouldn’t.
On the other hand, since about 1990, nearly all the journals in my field are scanned by NASA and made publically available for free online (a year or two after they're published: subscriptions to the journals by libraries and individuals are what keep them in business). It made obsolete the old practice of standing before the photocopy machine to make my own copy of a journal paper (which can enable someone else to read the journal once I’m done, and which can take days to read anyway). Still, between many years of this old practice, and many years of just looking the paper up with the computer in my office and hitting “Print,” over 30 years of research I have accumulated about three file cabinets of paper, worth about $1,000. These copies of papers have been and continue to be vital to my research, and the external grants I pull in cover the cost of the paper.
I accumulated about one file cabinet (about $300 worth) of paper during my first postdoc. Interestingly, the stipulations of my grant explicitly allowed me to take that paper with me to my next job, which was another postdoctoral research associate job. I suppose the funding agency recognized that no one else would want these copies of papers, and since they’d been printed on, they couldn’t be resold as paper.
All the while accumulating more paper, I took my collection to my third postdoc, and to my next job as an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, and then to my tenure-track job, at which I was granted tenure and am still doing.
All those opportunity costs of having been a postdoc so long have ensured that I probably will never be able to retire. What will happen to these three file cabinets full of paper when I die? They’ll probably go straight in the trash. (We don’t have recycling here: it was axed in the last budget crunch.) This would not be surprising, since they were of value only to me.
Of course, now we have lots more electronics than when I was starting out. I now have a good tablet computer, and could use it to download and store these papers, and to read them anywhere, so that I don’t have to print out the papers at all.
I’ve lately been coveting the volume in my office taken up by the three file cabinets, so guess what? I’ve been thinking of going through the collection, downloading the papers onto my tablet. Once I get done, what will become of the paper copies? I’ll probably just pitch them---all perfectly legally, of course.
Something that’s surprised me about this discussion is that no one so far has pointed out that a full proffie of physics like me gets paid less than a dental hygienist. I don’t have to work inside struggling kids’ mouths, but what university and K-12 teachers get paid reflects society’s value for this kind of work. That we often need to use our own money to buy things our students need is even worse.
The amount of paperwork and/or begging required to get anything at my place makes the idea of embezzling anything laughable. If we buy something and expect reimbursement (like dinner for a candidate), we better have receipts in triplicate, tip a maximum of 12%, and explain clearly why three people attended and exactly what each of them ate.
It's easier to pay out of pocket. And believe me, that isn't because of the six figure salaries...
I really wonder how much I pay out of pocket each year. The only reason I don't calculate it is because Mrs. EC1 has feelings on the subject and would not be happy (at some point I am sure I would let it slip, being the fool that I am in her presence).
I suppose there are worse things to keep back from one's partner, however.
A phenomenon that I think should be viewed as a form of embezzlement that is very common in academia is tenured professors who are abusing their tenure and coasting to retirement, not being active in research or mentoring students, and teaching the same old shit every year from yellowed notes, and not very well even if it were up to date. Of course, prosecuting people like this for embezzlement is probably about as likely as prosecuting a student who plagiarizes for fraud: a nice dream.
Isn’t how much one gets paid supposed to be related to how much value one creates? I think I can make a good case that I give my students a good value for their money. I certainly have a good record in helping to place my students in well-paid, interesting jobs that make use of what I did for them. Can the university president, the MANY administrators who work under him, or the football coach, all of whom make MUCH more than what I make, make this claim plausibly?
ReplyDeleteI am always very careful not to take home anything that belongs to my university. I could easily do so, partly because almost no one at my university knows doodley-squat about my field of science---but then knowing this is precisely what my job is. Another reason is that, like many proffies, I don't have such a sharp dividing line between work and the rest of my life.
I just got an exercise in this during the past week. I have a lab that looks like my grandfather Viktor’s: the kind of place where one false move will get 4,000 volts through you. We’re now getting over twice as many physics majors as we did ten years ago, so next semester my lab will be crowded with students, who need to work there. I therefore spent the last week clearing out the lab, as much as possible: both throwing out old, obsolete equipment that hasn’t been used for many years, and taking home personal stuff that has accumulated there.
Even if old, obsolete equipment no longer works at all, and even if it did the prospect that it would ever be used again is negligible since science is about doing new things, I am not allowed simply to throw this stuff in the trash. This is because it doesn’t belong to me: it belongs to the university, so I need to do the proper paperwork and get approval before disposing of anything. Some of this equipment can be hazardous, and needs to be disposed of properly, anyway. I don’t have any radioactive material, but a colleague of mine in medical physics has to be even more careful when disposing of old junk.
Personal stuff belonging to me that accumulated in my lab included a tent and a sleeping bag. Some years ago, as a community outreach program, important since we are a public university, I used to go to star parties hosted by the local amateur astronomy club. During weekends, we would bring telescopes up to dark sites in the mountains, far from city lights, and do digital photography of astronomical objects, useful for education. It was great fun.
When my Mom heard about this, she gave me a tent and a sleeping bag, since I’d been sleeping during the day in one of the university vehicles I’d driven up there. I did get some use of the tent and sleeping bag, but stopped when we built our remote observatory. The remote observatory obviated the need for camping, since my students and I operate it mainly by remote control over the internet. We go up to it once a month to do maintenance, but there’s no longer any need to stay up there for more than 24 hours, since we’re no longer hauling heavy equipment.
So, the tent and the sleeping bag sat there, occupying volume in the lab for years. Since they were my personal property, I got to take them home. I also get to take home else anything I paid for (or was given to me) that I use in my work, such as books. I do NOT get to take home any items that were paid for by the university, or paid for by grants awarded to the university, since those items belong to the university. It’s good to be careful about that.
My answers are pretty much the same as Frod’s, but without the excitement of telescopes.
ReplyDeleteDo I get paid too much? Not really – fair for what I bring into the joint in terms of students and funding.
Batshit U. tracks its proffies’ purchases depending on what they cost. There’s no checking of things under 10 dollars, except that we need to prove we actually bought the item. 50 bucks means it needs to be in your office for the 12 months after an item was bought, and 100 dollars means you need to keep it for 5 years and have on hand any time your office is audited. I’ve been audited twice in the past 10 years.
I don’t know of anyone who embezzles, but I suspect it happened in the past as we have an interesting list of things we can’t buy (including wall clocks, Christmas cards, & fountain pens).
I steal office supplies. Mostly paper. I suppose that's unethical and immoral, but not in the same league as murder or being a republican.
ReplyDeletePaper is a gray area here. If you take whole reams of paper home for your own use, you know you shouldn’t.
DeleteOn the other hand, since about 1990, nearly all the journals in my field are scanned by NASA and made publically available for free online (a year or two after they're published: subscriptions to the journals by libraries and individuals are what keep them in business). It made obsolete the old practice of standing before the photocopy machine to make my own copy of a journal paper (which can enable someone else to read the journal once I’m done, and which can take days to read anyway). Still, between many years of this old practice, and many years of just looking the paper up with the computer in my office and hitting “Print,” over 30 years of research I have accumulated about three file cabinets of paper, worth about $1,000. These copies of papers have been and continue to be vital to my research, and the external grants I pull in cover the cost of the paper.
I accumulated about one file cabinet (about $300 worth) of paper during my first postdoc. Interestingly, the stipulations of my grant explicitly allowed me to take that paper with me to my next job, which was another postdoctoral research associate job. I suppose the funding agency recognized that no one else would want these copies of papers, and since they’d been printed on, they couldn’t be resold as paper.
All the while accumulating more paper, I took my collection to my third postdoc, and to my next job as an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, and then to my tenure-track job, at which I was granted tenure and am still doing.
All those opportunity costs of having been a postdoc so long have ensured that I probably will never be able to retire. What will happen to these three file cabinets full of paper when I die? They’ll probably go straight in the trash. (We don’t have recycling here: it was axed in the last budget crunch.) This would not be surprising, since they were of value only to me.
Of course, now we have lots more electronics than when I was starting out. I now have a good tablet computer, and could use it to download and store these papers, and to read them anywhere, so that I don’t have to print out the papers at all.
I’ve lately been coveting the volume in my office taken up by the three file cabinets, so guess what? I’ve been thinking of going through the collection, downloading the papers onto my tablet. Once I get done, what will become of the paper copies? I’ll probably just pitch them---all perfectly legally, of course.
Something that’s surprised me about this discussion is that no one so far has pointed out that a full proffie of physics like me gets paid less than a dental hygienist. I don’t have to work inside struggling kids’ mouths, but what university and K-12 teachers get paid reflects society’s value for this kind of work. That we often need to use our own money to buy things our students need is even worse.
The amount of paperwork and/or begging required to get anything at my place makes the idea of embezzling anything laughable. If we buy something and expect reimbursement (like dinner for a candidate), we better have receipts in triplicate, tip a maximum of 12%, and explain clearly why three people attended and exactly what each of them ate.
ReplyDeleteIt's easier to pay out of pocket. And believe me, that isn't because of the six figure salaries...
I really wonder how much I pay out of pocket each year. The only reason I don't calculate it is because Mrs. EC1 has feelings on the subject and would not be happy (at some point I am sure I would let it slip, being the fool that I am in her presence).
ReplyDeleteI suppose there are worse things to keep back from one's partner, however.
A phenomenon that I think should be viewed as a form of embezzlement that is very common in academia is tenured professors who are abusing their tenure and coasting to retirement, not being active in research or mentoring students, and teaching the same old shit every year from yellowed notes, and not very well even if it were up to date. Of course, prosecuting people like this for embezzlement is probably about as likely as prosecuting a student who plagiarizes for fraud: a nice dream.
ReplyDelete