Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean

July 5, 2011, 6:46 pm

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video, “Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

Since it was unveiled in 2009, over 125,000 videos have been posted to YouTube EDU, according to figures supplied by YouTube, totaling more than 63,500 hours of video—approximately seven years of screen time.

Top 10 Most Viewed YouTube EDU Videos of 2010-11

1. Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation–UC Berkeley, roughly 471,000 views

2. 2011 Commencement Address by Denzel Washington–University of Pennsylvania, 345,000 views

3. Conan O’Brien Delivers Dartmouth’s Commencement Address–Dartmouth University, 297,000 views

4. Universal Gripper–University of Chicago, 195,000 views

5. The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library: How It Works–University of Chicago, 138,000 views

6. Module 02_01 | MIT 8.01SC Physics I: Classical Mechanics, Fall 2010–MIT, 121,000 views

7. The Dalai Lama Talks About Compassion, Respect–Stanford University, 118,000 views

8. PhillieBot Robot Gives First Pitch at a Phillies Game–University of Pennsylvania, 111,000 views

9. Tom Hanks Addresses the Yale Class of 2011–Yale University, 104,000 views

10. New Way To Faster, Cheaper Wireless–Stanford University, 67,000 views

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the_pragmatist

Why is it that even the slightest infraction on the part of Israel (often in response to suicide bombings and rocket attacks)… receive such widespread condemnation from faculty members at college campuses in Northern CA, yet they remain silent in the face of clear atrocities against the Israeli citizens by groups like Hamas which sanction not only sanction/encourage the killing of what they refer to as “infidels” (aka Christians, Jews, Hindu’s and others they claim are “non-believers”) and have as part of their stated charter… the goal of wiping Israel off the map. It’s ridiculous!!

Loss of human life on all sides should be mourned and condemned, but then again, most on the far-left who do the preaching from the comfort of their university settings… haven’t experienced life surrounded by neighbors who want them dead… and would go so far as to strap their own children with bombs to accomplish this task. The only way innocent Palestians caught in the cross-fire will end up with a free state of their own… is when people stop blindly focusing on Israel and target the violent ideology of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and the leaders of countries like Iran and Syria who fund them. Wake up Northern CA!
tonybalis

Your readers may find these compelling commencements speeches from the last 30 years also of interest:

http://www.humanity.org/voices/commencements.

Tony Balis
The Humanity Initiative
laundrydishes

Meanwhile, “Darth Vader vs Hitler. Epic Rap Battles of History 2,” has logged 23.5 million views and counting…
http://twitter.com/karinejoly karinejoly

Was there a compelling reason for not linking or embedding any of the videos in your post? Is it because this piece was written for the print edition?
Marnie Tonson

Thanks for this. Embedding links would be helpful. Maybe later. Just saying. :-)
http://twitter.com/jryoung Jeff

We’re restoring the embed code now — the videos were in the original post but then there was a glitch, apparently, that removed them.
eszter

Northwestern alum Stephen Colbert’s Northwestern Commencement speech is a must-see. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tiaooiIo0 You probably missed it, because the full speech is not on the official Northwestern YouTube channel and it’s been up for less time than the other videos since NU is on the quarter system so Commencement isn’t until later in the year. In the less than three weeks the video has been up, it’s gotten over 231,206 views, for good reason!
http://twitter.com/jryoung Jeff

Interesting — I wonder why Northwestern didn’t put this on their official channel. This article only considered videos on YouTube EDU (official channel).
http://www.facebook.com/brian.t.flanagan Brian Flanagan

The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University posted to YouTube a debate between Christopher and Peter Hitchens (on religion and the Iraq War). It has attracted more than 125 thousand views, which would place it sixth on the Chronicle’s list!

http://bit.ly/10fhrb
http://twitter.com/jryoung Jeff

This list only considered hits during a one-year period.. there are definitely some videos on YouTube EDU that have scored more views over their lifetime — I think the alltime winner is the
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo (more than 13 million hits)
rachel_wiseman

Northwestern did in fact upload a version of Colbert’s commencement speech onto their YouTube EDU channel, but three days after a spectator did. Predictably, the video that went up first went viral first, which explains why the official Northwestern version only received 4,000 views. It’s an interesting case of universities competing with regular users for hits on the videos they post.
http://ericstoller.com/blog/ Eric Stoller

One of my favorite university YouTube “hits” is the Ohio Union flash mob video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDNOB6TnHSI It’s more of a commercial for the union, but with more than 2.5 million views, I’d say it did fairly well….
http://twitter.com/HCCBrobstCenter Hawkeye Brobst Cntr

Excellent! Very informative post!
http://twitter.com/vanishingirl Michele

Wonder if this performance by Cal’s Noteworthy, with 4.4 million views, is the most seen YouTube video recorded at UC Berkeley? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5czKqT05A
phillipsmith03

Such aninteresting post! The Austin Whitney video is so inspirational, as are the
commencement speakers. Even Conan gets a little serious! The school I work at,
Westwood College, created a great video I wanted to share: http://bit.ly/oPCZbn.
It provides helpful info on financial aid and explains how students can get
assistance in paying for college.
rei727887

I love Noteworthy. (It may have something to do with the fact that my son’s in the group.) :-)
chuckkle

While I agree with your general argument here and find it matches my experience, it’s also a fact that “some” faculty really do slack off, fail to do even the most minimal service, teach the same old classes over and over, hold the most minimal of office hours, etc. Students and their parents often notice this or hear about, as does the general public. Although it’s a small fraction of the total faculty at the schools I’ve work at, it’s definitely present. It seems that administrators vary a lot in handling it: some ignore it, some tolerate it, some cut off merit raises, some scold or reprimand.

Chuck Kleinhans
skeletonsincloset

Huzzah, Ms. Gasman. I read Mr. Levy’s piece after putting in 69.5 hours of WORKING this week. I eat lunch at my desk, if I have one at all, and often eat dinner there too. I teach in the summers, and during the optional winter term. If I am not in the classroom, I am grading, prepping classes, meeting with students or answering their emails, overseeing undergraduate reasearch, doing committee work, or dealing with administrative duties. I advise three student organizations, serve on the editorial board of a major journal in my field, and volunteer in a number of capacities off campus (as this is part of the evaluation process, it is part of my job). Next week is preregistration week, and at my institution, faculty academically advise students. This will mean that I will be working an 80 hour week next week. When I calculate my average work week, I come up with over 54 hours of work per week (that’s considering a 52 week year. I do take one week off a year). When I divide my salary by the number of hours I work, I find that I make about $20 an hour; just slightly more than my brother who works a manual labor job. out of that income, I have to pay to go to conferences, professional membership fees, and student loans, all things he doesn’t have to worry about. Bottom line, I love what I do, but I am not lazy, nor am I being compensated commeasurate with my education and training. I’d like to see Mr. Levy experience this lifestyle.
ming1951

David C. Levy…former academic and administrator. I glanced at his piece in the Post, but after working all weekend I’m too tired after this full Monday to slog through it. But his reference to

“[Americans who] they continue to pay for teaching time of nine to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks, making possible a month-long winter break, a week off in the spring and a summer vacation from mid-May until September”

got my attention.

Let’s see, on Saturday I spent about four hours reading in an area not my own to accurately insert a four or five-line paragraph into the text that I write for my freshman comparative culture class.

Is it conceivable that this Levy chap was…let me put it gently…unconscious during his career as an academic and administrator?

Or perhaps silly season is upon us.
11291652

Faculty don’t work 9-5, don’t answer to supervisors in the conventional manner, and do intellectual work, which is largely incomprehensible to most people who do work 9-5, answer to supervisors, generally dismiss or even despise intellectuals and/or do more quantifiable and visible work. K-12 teachers are somewhat susceptible to the same misunderstandings, but they babysit so there’s a general reluctance to come down too hard on them.

To chucckle I would say that every place I’ve ever worked, from pubs to Wall Street to the university has it share of slackers. It’s unfair to generalize to everyone else.
theskeptic

I also wonder if Levy was projecting given the dissociation with how most faculty operate. It sounds like he was another out of touch administrator.
11891122

I support what you write, but it is a little misleading to say faculty are paid for nine months and must raise funds if they are to work over the summer–at least at the institutions where I have worked, faculty 9 month salaries look a lot better than other employee’s 12 month salaries. And these 12 month employees also work very hard and are, for the most part, seriously under estimated and under appreciated.
tallenc

As a community college professor currently teaching five classes and team-teaching a sixth and having just spent another entire weekend grading papers, your post is most welcome. Thanks for setting the record straight. And by, the way, I’m not making much money in comparison to anyone I know.
http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

Do you know any of the adjuncts who teach at your school?
npboyer

The analogy that would fit this argument is that lawyers are paid only for time they appear in court; media presenters for corporations are payed only for the time they are actually making presentations to stockholders, and so on. Yes, some people don’t prepare for class or assign papers to read, but all professions have those slackers. For the model these critics use, we learned everything we teach in grad school and need only repeat it year after year. No lawyer or doctor could get away with that, and neither can we.
ellenschrecker

And, most faculty members, about 80% are adjuncts or non-tenure-track employees — without any of the security and, often, benefits that traditional tenured and tenure-track faculty members have. So, what in the world is David Levy talking about?
marvchron

It is pointless to tell each other how hard we work in a publication like The Chronicle. It is preaching to the choir. The response should be in the Washington Post as a rejoinder to the original article. We also need to be aware that no matter where we respond, it won’t be believed by the general public.
http://twitter.com/DrDWilliams Dr. D Williams

I appreciate both Ms. Gasman and Mr. Levy. Ms. Gasman for contributing to the important task of articulating what we faculty do, and Mr. Levy for challenging us to do so with greater clarity. As we continue to do so, the emerging awareness will reaffirm both our standards for professional behavior and the expectations of our constituents regarding what we do and how we do it.
mscarbecz

Sigh. How many times do we have to make the same arguments over and over again. Some pundit or state legislator outside academe writes that profs are under-worked and overpaid, and those of us inside higher ed write back that we do much more than our 9, 12, 15+ hours/week in the classroom. This argument will never end because the general public has a fundamental misunderstanding of higher education and data doesn’t matter.
agp293

I don’t understand… some faculty slack off in their teaching/prep work? I have only seen that in situations where the Professor knows he is leaving and going to another position… =/ How did those slacker professors get through grad school?
olmsted

Not that I disagree with the author, but the rhetoric of overused terms like “constantly” and “countless” and “long hours” mean little. If anything, they are the sort of grasping at straws defense that academics are renown for. Moreover, they are flat out weak explanations in the face of such attacks.

I think it is fair to assert that if we work such withering hours and give so much for the dollars we earn, then we ought not to shy away from adding up the numbers to tell how much we give.
kgodwin

This is certainly true at my institution. Our faculty are contracted to work 33 weeks a year (3 10 week terms plus three finals weeks), plus a handful of “work” days, and probably average 40-50 hours per week during that time, for a total of about 1650 hours a year. We require a master’s degree (and very few of our instructors have PhDs). Their salary scale ranges from roughly 47K to roughly 68K.

In contrast, my position requires a master’s degree, I work 40 hour weeks, 50 weeks a year (I get two weeks of paid vacation), which is roughly 2000 hours a year. For my extra 350 hours a year, my salary ranges from 39K to 51K.

I have little doubt that faculty are undervalued and given an unfair shake in the media. Just like the rest of us…
kgodwin

Or any support staff?
drjennycrisp

Fair enough. Looking over my calendar, I see that last week, I worked 57.5 hours. That was a bit excessive; most weeks it’s closer to 50.
d_opiniated

Here in California a high school teacher fresh out of school and with little more than a BA starts at about $50K with incredible benefits. Many will retire with 100% of their highest pay for life. They certainly work hard the first year or two, but after that, most enjoy winter break, spring break and summers. What percentage of college professors do that well?
d_opiniated

The question isn’t how hard professors work. Lots of people work long hours. Lots of people work hard. Lots of people ruin their health in the process. The real question is how much value the public places on their contribution. The public seems to value coaches and entertainers. Professors … not so much.
darccity

In any case, it’s the wrong question. “Are profs effective?” is the right one. Profs could be putting in 100 hrs/week year round and virtually live in their office and still be an utter waste of resources by the college if the fruits of faculty labor aren’t valued instructional, research, and service outcomes.

But that in turn prompts three prior questions:
(1) Are those learning and research outcomes measured at all?
(2) Are faculty hired, renewed, and promoted based on some measurable standards of expectations?
(3) Does administration and faculty governance frustrate profs from being effective?

The consistent negative answers to these 3 question is the root cause of the problem and the key to reversing the slide of U.S. higher education.
kgodwin

What percentage of anyone else will do that well? I know no one who works at my institution will get 100% retirement, and very few of our positions start anywhere near 50K. I guess I’m confused about what your argument is?
http://twitter.com/mrsmac2001 Lunden MacDonald

I would be laughing if I were not crying!
11291652

Oh, I do wish I had a nickel for every administrator who ignores and tolerates things. Things like crumbling facilities and building security, hopelessly inadequate technology, student needs and safety, sexual harassment. Today’s SF Chronicle says that the California State University spent $9 million dollars settling with whistle blowers who were fired for reporting various abuses. If that’s not administration slacking off, what exactly is it?!
ohreally

I think we are missing the forest for the trees.

There is a general trend in this country to devalue work by those who actually do it.
Mr Levy is simply applying the same lens to academia. From this perspective, corporate managers and administrators deserve their outsized windfall and the worker on the line, the salesmen, middle manager and even programmer (they make oodles from stock options, not salary) are thought to be interchangeable if not overpaid. In classic top-down, command and control corporate management style, more “high-level” people are paid to find “efficiencies” which usually means in labor costs.

Why does Levy not critique rising numbers of administrators and their increased salaries
or the arms race in student amenities (e.g. dorms, gyms, etc.) as leading to exorbitant tuition costs?
We know these are major factors. Because in his world they are the managers and customers–they are not only never wrong, they are indispensable. The worker is afterthought. Is it a coincidence that, according to another article on this website, faculty and graduate student union membership is on the rise?

They are coming for you now, faculty, like they’ve come for the staff before you.
assistdir

If only honesty and not self-defensiveness reigned. For a vast number of faculty, particularly post-tenuring, it is a part-time job for part of the year at a very inflated salary that is driving up the cost of later education for so very many that can ill-afford the cost. I’ve watched this grow over the last three decades as a parent and as a part-time faculty member at a research university who has the same teaching load as my 6 figure salaried colleagues at a per-hour rate of pay that is justifiable given my four graduate degrees (including my Ivy League doctorate), but is a small fraction of what these other folks take home, a place where it appears that little other productivity goes on given the paucity of their publications, particularly compared to what I have been able to produce despite my full-time non-university job alongside my university teaching. I am not adding this latter part for self-aggrandizement, since this is sent anonymously in order not to embarrass my colleagues (and not to protect my position which i am planning to leave for retirement in a few weeks). Much like the greed-infested medical industry, it is long past time for a major change in the academy. But there is little incentive for this as yet, particularly oat the part of upper level of management in a system where the administrators often as unconscionably paid as their faculties are, if not more so.
will08smith

(1) Are those learning and research outcomes measured at all?

Yes.

(2) Are faculty hired, renewed, and promoted based on some measurable standards of expectations?

Yes.

(3) Does administration and faculty governance frustrate profs from being effective?

Incomprehensible question–not parallel.
will08smith

In response to this article–here and in the Post and elsewhere– I wish faculty members would quit whinging about how hard they work. Everybody works pretty hard, and a lot of people work harder than we do and are paid a lot less. It’s unseemly and tasteless and the fact that so many profs seem to have a lot of time to kvetch just proves Levy’s point.
will08smith

“For a vast number of faculty, particularly post-tenuring, it is a part-time job for part of the year at a very inflated salary.” Unless one accepts the notion that the only work occurs in the class hour, I don’t think there’s any evidence to support this “vast number.” What about percentages? What percentage of tenured faculty do you believe have a “a part-time job for part of the year at a very inflated salary.” How many in the medical school at your research university? how many in engineering? how many in the humanities? how many in business . . . . oops, better not go there.
bochierd

will08smith,
Unlike those other professions who work hard and get paid less, there aren’t articles written about how lazy they are in national newspapers, legislators calling for reduction in their health benefits or wages for their work because they really only work 9 hours a week anyway…etc. So it isn’t unseemly or tasteless to point out that we as a whole do indeed work hard and we do earn our pay. If we don’t defend ourselves when people like Levy write erroneous articles about our profession, who will? You?
bochierd

I can’t speak to your experience, but I can say that at the six teaching institutions where I have been a student, a staff member, and now a professor, all the post-tenure faculty continue to work very hard and they do not earn anywhere close to a 6 figure salary.
bochierd

True, but other than pointing to the truth and trying to get people to understand, how would you suggest we rectify the perception?
will08smith

You can check out how underpaid you are here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17543356
will08smith

I’d disagree. Rebutting Levy’s article with self-serving anecdotal statements about excessive amounts of work will seem to most readers, including other professors, as unpersuasive. That’s because we’ve all heard kvetching from people in our own departments who very gladly use some mythical amount of work (which they always seem to be doing “at home”) in order to dodge committees–which their genuinely hardworking and often uncomplaining colleagues then have to do for them. Sometimes they complain so much they get “course release”–but at least then grossly underpaid adjuncts get another section. Now it is absolutely true that most tenured professors earn their pay–but a continued litany of “I had to grade papers until midnight” isn’t going to get much sympathy. How about — I had to wake up every day for several months in the Summer and decide where, when and how long I would work, and most of my work was reading and writing about the things that I love. . . and I got paid! and nobody checked up on me at all!

Many other workers are also pilloried in the national press. All government workers and union workers, for instance. Or, at the other extreme, lawyers and bankers. The notion that it’s only us is just another bit of special pleading.
anne3110

Thank you for this article, though I fear you are preaching to the converted, i.e. academics! The fact that some slackers exist among us hardly undermines your overall point. There are always freeriders in any job situation.

Now, back to work. My day started at 8 a..m. today; I should be finished by around 9 p.m.! (That may not be typical, but it is not atypical, either.)
susanmtk

Yes, I’m tired of the assumptions made about my workload and my salary, and
I am disturbed by the very real repercussions that have resulted from these
assumptions.

Changing people’s misconceptions about how community college
faculty use their time matters. This
year our county council reduced funding to our college, which resulted in reduction-in-pay
furloughs for faculty. Articles in local
papers have called for faculty at our college to teach a 6/6 load because they
believe that we work only 21 hours a week (15 in the classroom plus 6 required
office hours).

As an English professor at a community college, teaching a
5/5 load with four preps, I work a 70 hour work week (or more). In the past two
weeks I graded 34 poetry portfolios (which each take between 2 and 4 hours each
to grade), 24 research papers (which each take 1 to 2 hours to grade), 18
midterm essays (another 15 hours or so of grading), 11 revisions (another 6 to
8 hours of grading) and homework for all five classes (another 8 hours of grading).
Oh, and of course, I meet with students
regularly, advise a student club, coordinate a visiting writers series, co-ordinate
a college coffeehouse, serve on college and department committees, serve on advisory
boards, mentor new faculty and on and on…

I think articles like David Levy’s are not just inaccurate,
they are irresponsible.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=756475595 David Voros

With regards to this comment in the article- ” With regard to winter and spring vacations, most faculty members I know
are preparing for the spring academic term over the winter holiday break
and grading midterms during spring break”, most faculty I know are flying to the islands or driving to their beach houses.
poom1

at the best institutions, production often drops off after tenure.many uc profs. are full-profs on the basis of one book, with a second in the works. they teach 4 classes a year, usually with one quarter off. they have paid leave every 3-4 years. yet many drop-out ‘inside’–and the average salary for a full prof in uc is 153k (from chronicle stats). when they publish, the work is often narrow–and they gobble up, through their position, valuable publication space at university presses. in the arts and humanities, we have a prestige-system in place of a critical knowledge system. we should ask some profs to pay their students to teach, perhaps?
cdjunkjunk

(1) “K-12 teachers are somewhat susceptible to the same misunderstandings”

More than “somewhat” — they hear all the same arguments, and probably more frequently, more loudly, by more people who feel more entitled to complain.

(2) “but they babysit”

If I could, on behalf of my HS teacher wife and her colleagues, I’d reach through my computer and thump your nose, you twit.

(3) “so there’s a general reluctance to come down too hard on them”

See (1) above.
cdjunkjunk

“They certainly work hard the first year or two, but after that…”

Along with 11291652, you deserved a good nose-thumping.
docfinance

Of course Levy’s piece is ridiculous on its face. I cannot remember a time when faculty productivity was measured by how many hours per week they were in class. One thing we still DON’T do, however, is measure productivity by how many hours we’re in the office. That’s for bureaucrats and clockwatchers. Technology requires us to remain connected nearly all the time, and I for one carry work everywhere that I go, all the time. Certainly that’s what my online students expect, and what they deserve, so I cater to them. To quote an administrator at a faculty meeting a few years ago: it is no longer enough to just walk into the classroom and teach. When we stopped laughing, we asked “when was that the case?”

Sure, there are slackers in every profession. But those of us who are engaged in all aspects of the profession (teaching, research and service for those who’ve forgotten) have little time to speak up and defend the progress that we’re making in educating students, administrators and the public. Those of us who are engaged remember what our role is all about and are busy getting to it.
baatap

I agree with you . . . sort of. I am sitting in an air-conditioned office, and I enjoy my work. I can probably work until I’m 80 if I want, so I don’t need to make a ton of money in a few short years. But I would like to be able to take my three children off of state health care. I can’t afford my school’s insurance, and my income is low enough that I qualify for government assistance. But with a small raise, I probably won’t, and then I will be even worse off. (Can one negotiate for a pay cut?) A problem that nobody seems to be willing to address nowadays is that it is becoming a profession very unfriendly to men with children. But that’s another issue for another article.
bochierd

Sorry will08smith, but I think you’ve misunderstood. I don’t think the author of the article or anyone in the thread complained of “excessive over work” rather than reporting a more accurate level and time spent working than the excessive underwork claimed in Levy’s article. Are there academics who abuse the system? Sure. As there are politicians, plumbers, bankers, lawyers, mechanics, parks and rec people, social workers, etc who also take advantage of the systems in which they work and their co-workers have to do their work for them. Having worked for 20 years outside academia before going to grad school and working my way to chair of my dept, people are people. Assuming or arguing however that the bad apples are the norm in any field doesn’t fit the actual evidence.

Many other workers are pilloried in the national press, none for the same reasons Levy gave in his article. Your claim above however was that there are a lot of professions who work harder, get paid less. I responded that those professions are not pilloried in the press. You respond talkin about: lawyers, bankers, government workers, union workers. The folk in the first three groups are sometimes attacked in the press, but all of them as a general rule make more than I do by a large margin. I know of 2 custodial staff and a departmental secretary at my institution who make more than I do as chair of my department, they’re government employees. As am I. And I’m union. I. E. those professions you mention in this last post are not those who work hard and are paid less for the most part. When lawyers and bankers are pilloried in the press, its for much different reasons than any of those Levy gives for the professoriate. By the way, I didn’t claim it was only us; I pointed out that those who work harder and are paid less than the professoriate are generally not pilloried in the press: the list you gave are not people who work harder and are paid less than most professors.