<p>I think I am correct in understanding that some profs supplement their salary through outside research funding?
Which is why public schools can afford hotshots & how they can afford to put their kids through expensive lacs.
I hope his salary isn't coming at the expense of other depts.
CUNY</a> is Paying David Petraeus $200,000 to Work Three Hours a Week</p>
<p>The poor dear has appeared to have had his salary SLASHED.</p>
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<p>There are some that <em>might</em> deserve that kind of figure.
He’s not one of them.</p>
<p>At least he’ll be able to pick up a second job to make ends meet.</p>
<p>Not defending this very high salary, but it’s not so that he’s working three hours a week.</p>
<p>Prep for a seminar should take 2-3x the amount of time of the seminar. In addition, he should be grading papers and exams.</p>
<p>What professors do for a class involves far more than walking in and lecturing and leading discussion.</p>
<p>Just came from a lunch with a lot of retired college profs who were bemoaning the increasing use of adjuncts and temp profs, and saying the pay came down, in one particular case, to less than minimum wage when out of class time (including office hours) was added in. Gave me one more thing to consider in college search.</p>
<p>I hate to think an occasional celebrity is thought to represent “professor” salaries.</p>
<p>But it seems P will also have a role at USC.
"Judge Widney Professors — named after USC’s founder — are prestigious individuals from the arts, sciences, business and national leadership, the school said.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>David Petraeus is a famous personality. His pay at CUNY is in no way representative of the reality of the vast majority of professors.</p></li>
<li><p>Even with graduate assistants, his class will not take three hours a week of work. These claims are getting really old. They assume that professors walk into the classroom 5 minutes before the class begins and just ramble off the top of their head about anything. If the class is a new prep, the professor may spend many hours a week honing his expertise into a digestable lecture. I’m a graduate student so I take a bit longer, but I have definitely labored for 4 hours over ONE 2-hour lecture. Even the professor for whom I was TAing, who had taught this class for 20 years, spent more than the 4 hours a week she was in the classroom working on the course.</p></li>
<li><p>Graduate student support is standard for all professors; it’s not a special thing Petraeus is getting. I’d give my left foot to TA for David Petraeus anyway. Can you imagine having that letter of recommendation in your application to professor jobs?</p></li>
<li><p>Visiting professors don’t only teach. Even if he has one class, he is likely to be expected to do other things - like give public talks, do some research, etc.</p></li>
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<p>I’m not saying that he’s overpaid, but media outlets like Gawker love to claim that professors are lazy and overpaid and only work 10 hours a week. Just because you only see them in the classroom doesn’t mean that’s the only work they’re doing.</p>
<p>I think the point being made is that his salary is disproportionate in comparision to other adjuncts on campus.</p>
<p>[Bring</a> It to Class « The Adjunct Project](<a href=“http://cunyadjunctproject.org/get-involved/organizingeducation/bring-it-to-class/]Bring”>Bring It to Class)</p>
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<p>His fame is also disproportionate to the typical adjunct. This says nothing much about anything except a way to get CUNY in the news.</p>
<p>Which is perhaps why they are doing it?</p>
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<p>Well, duh. He also brings inside knowledge of national security that no other adjunct can. Few people could, except for, say, the Clintons, Madeline Albright, Condoleeza Rice and a handful of other people. </p>
<p>It’s hard for me to get worked up over this. His fame and the value of having a class in national security taught by Petraeus IS far greater than anyone else that CUNY could scare up (that, frankly, most colleges could scare up). I also guarantee that Petraeus’ speaking fee for, say, a one-hour speech is higher than any other professor at CUNY. The market will bear it – so I say good for him.</p>
<p>And good for CUNY</p>
<p>It is so frustrating to continue to hear claims about how professors, or even classroom teachers, are so overpaid. This often comes from people who don’t appreciate the complexity of their jobs. Yes, they may get some time off that makes their jobs more flexible than typical 9 to 5 jobs. But they often work from home, have ongoing pressures, and experience a range of demands that the public often does not see. The high cost of college education is not due to their salaries; rather, the many other demands, buildings, expenses colleges invest in.</p>
<p>Petraeus won’t be functioning as an ordinary professor. He seems to have both the position at CUNY and some responsibilities at USC. I’m sure some additional availability ( to students, faculty or the program) is part of the deal, but somehow don’t seen him spending the usual hours planning and researching lectures, sitting at his desk intensely grading papers, etc.</p>
<p>So, what he contracted to do and will be paid, have little relationship to ordinary profs. He does have the creds- his experiences and the Princeton PhD. Beyond that, no different than hiring any major public figure for a short term add.</p>
<p>If I were a college student interested in this arena, I’d pay a lot of money to take a course or hear a lecture from Petraeus. I think he’d be fascinating.</p>
<p>Lecture circuit fees for a guy of Petraus’ stature run between 50 and 100k.</p>
<p>So he is wasting far too much time at CUNY for a measly 150k. He could be making that in 2-3 lectures.</p>
<p>I think it’s an effort to reassert his legitimacy. Maybe to keep those lucrative speaking engagements coming. Or maybe to work toward a niche position where he can settle down, come in off the road, so to say. Whether at a U or as a consultant. Could it be to share with a next generation? Yes, it could be that, too.</p>
<p>He’s a very brilliant guy, actually. If he hadn’t had the scandal, he would be making a lot more at a bigger place.</p>
<p>Students will be fortunate to get him.</p>
<p>That said, I maintain my position that the move towards adjuncts and underpaying faculty at the expense of administrator costs is an unfortunate development in our institutions these days.</p>
<p>carry on.</p>
<p>He’ll be teaching a seminar, which almost certainly means a small number of students. It’s not even clear that it’s more than a 1-semester seminar. I have no doubt he’s a brilliant and knowledgeable guy with a lot of interesting things to say, and the smallish number of students who will interact with him will get a lot out of it. But $150K is an awful lot for any school to pay someone for one seminar, especially without a commitment to be around the campus full-time or nearly full-time to interact with students and faculty and to engage in scholarly research that will bolster the school’s standing in the academic world.</p>
<p>I think CUNY is essentially paying $150K for the PR value of having a relationship with David Petraeus. And in a way Petraeus is doing it for the PR value, too. As others have said, he could easily make more money elsewhere. Teaching helps him reassert his academic credentials, which are considerable. Teaching at a place like CUNY, when he could have had his choice of more elite institutions, cloaks him in an aura of public service, while doing it in the heart of the nation’s and the world’s most important media market. All of this is designed to put his tarnished reputation behind him–and of course, the more he polishes away that tarnish, the more PR value he has to CUNY.</p>
<p>It’s clever all around, in a PR gimmicky sort of way. But I’m not convinced it’s a sound way to run an institution of higher education. I suspect CUNY has some real meat-and-potatoes needs; instead, they’re spending this $150K/year on glitter.</p>
<p>May be they should have called it an admin position with some seminar teaching responsibility.</p>
<p>It would be better to have an open seminar so more people benefit.</p>