The life of UVSC faculty

Over the weekend there were two rather interesting articles that look at UVSC faculty. One was an opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune and said that university professors are under-worked and over-paid. It is a response to UVSC's own David Keller, who wrote an editorial in last week's Trib calling for funding to match the school's new mission.

Obviously the author hasn't been around UVSC much (he says that it is located in Provo not Orem...a small mistake to be sure, but telling). He talks about his own experience as a professor at a research university, noting that his work day was over by noon, allowing him to enjoy free swimming and cheap golf. A tour of UVSC's, shall we say, spartan facilities would have been helpful before writing such an article.

There is no doubt that some professors, and let's go ahead and say some UVSC professors, take advantage of the unstructured culture common among colleges and universities. You won't find professors punching time clocks, or doing much heavy lifting. But I would say that the vast majority of professors at any college work hard and earn their salaries and any extra accouterments that get thrown their way.

The other article worth mentioning comes from the College Times and deals with the subject of tenure. This isn't a groundbreaking article, but is nice to let students in on an important part of college life. And you can gaurntee that as the school progresses to university status, the issue of tenure will become more heated.