Why didn't she get a full time job?
I can't see how the school is responsible for her horrible career and long term financial planning.
If you're making $10,000/year is the US, while having an education, it's your own damn fault.
I can't see how the school is responsible for her horrible career and long term financial planning.
If you're making $10,000/year is the US, while having an education, it's your own damn fault.
But it does highlight the fact that working in academia can be a worse career than working in retail.
I agree; it is exploitative.
But why do people keep showing up to do it? For every person who quits finally there are another dozen lined up to take the job. Perhaps that may be a little exaggeration, and no doubt it varies by region and subject matter, but people doing adjunct work must be getting compensation that is not salary or else why are they doing it? (Maybe I should say that I work in higher ed; I've often been puzzled by people's motivations about this.)
Social status. Nobody gets looked down upon when they say that they're an adjunct professor at a university.
And of course it's rewarding and stimulating work.
> But it does highlight the fact that working in academia can be a worse career than working in retail.
Working part time in either without paying for private health insurance will end up the same.
And yes, being a teacher doesn't pay much, but she didn't bother to advance her career over what, 60 years? She basically did the same thing she liked day after day, and expected the society/country to take care of her needs.
I agree that it would be nice to have a single payer healthcare system in the US, but that's not how it is.
If she was living in Western Europe she'd probably be retired 23 years already, have a pension and free healthcare.
Living in the US without health insurance is a ticking financial and health bomb. Even I, as an immigrant, knew that. That's why I paid through my nose to have insurance for me and my family when I was an independent contractor.
She lived day-to-day, didn't bother to plan even short term future, it's completely her fault.
She should have planned for it long before 83. I started planning my finances for retirement at 25.
She should've been eligible for Medicare, but I guess she didn't pay medicare taxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)#Eligib...
It's great that you're fortunate enough to have enough income to be able to plan for retirement at 25.
Nobody should have to go without healthcare just because they didn't plan ahead or didn't do the right set of steps. Health care should be available for anyone without putting the burden of being eligible for that care on individual people.
That is a bold and broad generalisation.
She deserved some compassion. By any reasonable point of view this was well-liked competent teacher who gave 25 years of service to her employer. She happened to fall through the social safety net.
Sadly, the way things are going, such miserable endings are going to become far more common when our generation becomes elderly.
Probably married with a husband earning the wage, the default mode of living in a marriage for the generation born in 1930.
Even a complete moron with no education can make more money doing cleaning, washing dishes, delivery, etc.
And that lady was not a complete moron, she was teaching.
The academia pays alright, you just have to do the hours. She didn't.
Then, there's a couple of other factors that come into play: The university only hands out part time contracts, so they're in a position to keep the wages low: Demand too much, no problem, we'll take another teacher for your course next year. I dispute your notion that academia in general pays enough. The given university pays an average of 20 - 25k to 75% of it's teachers. That's about half of the average wage in the USA. Even if they're working part-time that's still way too low for a job that requires university grade education. That's the people you entrust your childrens education to, not your dishwasher.
I assume that most of those 75% would love to have a full time job at the faculty, but the faculty obviously doesn't let them. So they either have a second/third job or live on scraps. Neither of those options is even remotely beneficial to the students education.
This is not true at all for dish washers and retail workers. The trend over time has been to schedule those workers at the maximum possible amount without them qualifying as a full time employee, which may entitle them to some kinds of benefits.
Considering she worked very relaxing hours, she could spend 10 hours a week searching for new clients.
At her age she shouldn't even be working. What has she been doing for over 60 years? Where is her social security, 401k/IRA, savings?