The Sacramento Bee reports today that the California State University faculty has voted to strike. Statewide, 82% of the more than 11,000 members of the California Faculty Association voted, with 94% of them authorizing the strike. Tensions have centered upon the lack of a contract and extreme disparity in the salaries of various faculty members. A possible strike will take the form of a rolling walkout, with individual campuses striking for two days at a time.
Here at home, the faculty of Sac State met as a body for the first time in 30 years. Among the budget discussions, a vote of no confidence in University President Alex Gonzalez was proposed. As next week is Spring Break, the vote will not occur until the next Faculty Senate meeting on April 5.
The Sac Rag 
They should be grateful for what they have. There are many people with PhD’s who are unable to get a teaching position at a university. Of course once they get tenure, the goal of most professors is to get more for themselves.
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i’m going to have to disagree with what Lynn said. This is not a “be happy with what you got” type situation. This is -Higher Education-. I like to think that professors should be ATTRACTED to our school. Unfortunatly most PhD’s would not even CONSIDER csus because of the extremely low pay and high course loads. One professor told me that another professor laughed in his face when he asked him to send his graduating phd’s to apply at csus.
I mean really, after 4 years of undergrad, 4 more years of grad work, possible projects & programs, (all of which forces you to live like a pauper) and quite considerable amounts of student loans, should a professor really be expected to live on a tiny amount of pay? These people aren’t working at the corner store, they are educating your children, siblings, neighbors, and yes.. me.
Professors are expected & often required to do research as well as teach classes.. so can you blame them for writing the book which the students are required to buy? THEY ARE THE EXPERT.
So.. go teachers.
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A local anchor said that professors make $86,000 a year.
By contrast, there are the homeless. I’ve seen some homeless on the same street corner for years. Once I saw a homeless, legless man taking a nap in a wheelchair in the middle of a parking lot. I once saw a woman who was well-dressed… and she had a blanket and pillow neatly folded in a two-wheeled shopping cart… THOSE are the type of people I feel sympathy for.
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The local anchor is INCORRECT.
Surprise surprise, the local news is not doing their homework and is simply using the figures put out by the University as propaganda against the strike.
Please keep in mind that I am not taking sides in this discussion, but I AM miffed when the University releases figures that are LIES in order to help turn public sentiment against the faculty.
The majority of instructors (more than half) at CSUS are not professors, but are part-time lecturers who are paid the equivalent of $32,000-$36,000 a year, which is pitiful.
The average full time professor does not make $86,000 a year, the administration is playng with statistics to fool you. I believe the figure that you are being told is the “average” salary calculated by taking the lowest paid professor at $50,000 and the highest paid professor at $122,000 and averaging the two. Abricadabra! Believe me, the average professor is much closer to the $50,000 number than the $122,000.
Now, $50,000 may sound like a lot of money to some but is pretty pitiful for someone with 10+years of college education and a PhD. Garbagemen probably make $50,000 a year in this town. (Shout out to the garbagemen who keep our city clean!)
Don’t believe everything you hear on the local news.
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Someone who makes $50,000 a year doesn’t tug at my heart strings. Sonemone who has all their belongings in a shopping cart does.
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Wow. This discussion feels kind of tacky. Can we all just agree that no matter the outcome it’s the students who will benefit from a strike, because their spring break just got extended, potentially by weeks. Woot woot.
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You know who I feel sympathy for? Joe Pesci. That’s right, Joe Pesci. He’s been a homeless man on that Harvard campus for years and never really gotten his due. Moira Kelly and I find him to be a really motivational homeless man. He helped me with my term paper way more than my professor did.
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Yeah, professor pesci’s boiler room was always open, spring break, strike or no.
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Pesci?? Pesci?? What about Robin Williams??
It took a lot of sensitivity to don that clown nose and spend time perfecting that lovable bedside manner.
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hmm.. well maybe if the homeless go on strike we can talk about them here on the sacrag. Wait.. would that mean they would start working? ..or maybe they would stop grabbing student’s boobs.
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