[CAUT] Job?

[Jeff Tanner]

My computer had another conniption, and my first response went only to Chris. But I'd like the list to read it so, here it goes:

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Christopher Purdy 
  To: Jeff Tanner ; caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 1:20 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] Job?


  Hey Jeff,


  You have a good point about contract work.  It's not exactly clear how the details are going to shake out.  What I know right now is that they will give me 30 hours a week for ten months.  That's going to come out to less than half of what I made this year and that ain't going to pay the mortgage.  I will not be working over the summer, which is when I got a whole lot of work done in the past.  When everyone hits town next Fall and 114 pianos are 20 cents sharp, there's going to be a bunch of screaming faculty.


  You're also right about that fact that this is going on all over, although the U. of Georgia figures you cite are incredible!  Here at OU we have been cutting budgets for 10 years, the last five years had deep cuts.  But this year is going to be epic.  The university is cutting between 5-10% across the board in all colleges.  After cutting for so many years, there is just nothing left to cut but jobs.  We may even loose graduate degree programs.  


  Chris
By the way, Chris,
When I was getting ready to leave my job at the U, I did the math and figured out that to replace the "take home" pay I was getting there, I only needed to come up with 6 1/2 tuning equivalents a week in the private sector, and 10 for gross salary (and this is what we bust our #$$ for?).  If you're losing only 10 hours a week for the 10 months, you can make that up in 1.75 tunings a week.
 
While I was at the U, I could still make up to $30K a year without having to pay more than I was wittholding in income tax, but I was filing married with 4 dependents, and mileage on one outside tuning a day was pretty high because it was almost never "on the way home." So, taxes, for me, at least, were never a problem. They may find some money at the end of the year to get some summer refurbishing work done, and you could do that at a competitive contract rate still much higher than your salary you've got to replace. You'd be surprised how easy it is to replace the university income.  It's the bennies you're working for.

I didn't hear the U of Georgia figures myself. My wife told me she heard that on a news report. To be fair, that school has been a national best education value for years thanks to one of the best lottery programs in the country keeping tuition low. But they've been in fiscal trouble for a while now because state funding has been dwindling for a very long time, even when we had those few good years about 4-5 years ago. So, part of this increase is probably just catching up with the Joneses. But still. I'd hate to know I had a high school senior ready to go when this news came out and all of a sudden we had to reevaluate the plans for next year.

Jeff
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