I went to a small college, one without a graduate program. Accordingly, the college had no teaching assistants and, at the time, relatively few lecturers in temporary or untenured positions. It wasn't until I started grad school back in 1997 that I realized how much of the teaching workload in the U.S. is shouldered by TAs, grad student instructors, and highly educated but poorly paid lecturers.

When I was a TA teaching 50 students at once, I brought home $1,300/month from November through July--and that was with two Master's degrees, several years of teaching experience, and a nearly completed Ph.D. I was one of the lucky ones; since the University of California had unionized, I was being paid well compared to TAs elsewhere, and I also had health insurance.

Even sadder than the case of TAs is that of lecturers, many of whom have Ph.D.s and decades of teaching experience, but who are not remunerated at the same rate as their tenured colleagues. As of 2004, lecturers at one of the most respected universities in this country, the University of Michigan, were earning as little as $20,000 per year.

In 2003, Keith Hoeller described his experiences off the tenure track:

On the tenure track, full-time professors receive multiyear contracts, with annual salaries, year-round health care, retirement benefits, sabbaticals, regular raises and promotions, and unparalleled job security (tenure).

On the nontenure track, part-timers receive semester-long contracts paying less than 50 percent of what tenure-track professors earn. For the most part, these adjuncts receive no health-care or retirement benefits, and no sabbaticals. They have little or no chance of promotion, let alone periodic raises. While many full-time faculty members now receive annual raises, most adjuncts are hired at the lowest rate and never see a raise. At one community college where I teach, I have never received a raise based on my 10 years of experience; I am paid at the same rate as a beginning instructor.

So before you send your undergraduate off to a world-renowned research university, ask yourself: Is my child learning from people who are paid fairly for their work? Are the instructors fully focused on teaching, or are they too busy scraping together a series of jobs at several campuses in order to make ends meet? (One semester, a friend of mine was teaching 27 units worth of courses at three universities.) Do they have health care? Is my student being taught by TAs who may or may not care about teaching, and who may have been (as I was) thrown into the classroom as instructors without any kind of apprenticeship period under a talented and experienced professor?

Breena Ronan wrote this week about what it's like to be a graduate student employee at the research university she calls "Big Ag. U." She abandoned poorly paying jobs in the nonprofit sector in favor of the better life promised by an academic career. Instead, she got this:

Jory writes in Fast Company about how the companies can be more aware of the financial difficulties of their employees. How I wish that certain non profits and universities would read her article.

This month I have yet to be paid by either of my university jobs. Meanwhile I'm expected to shell out for gas and thank you gifts for the folks participating in our research. For a university professor (or even the woman who does the payroll for our department) that amount of money would be nothing. When we found out that I hadn't been paid we had $70 in our account and no money for rent.

In comparison to most of the people in the world we are rich, so you will have to take my complaining with a grain of salt. Yet there are times when I feel deeply frustrated at the lack of understanding by the people I work with.

. . .and this:

Unfortunately the department I work for doesn't seem to value it's grad students at all. My adviser, the department head, and the MSO don't seem to care that I haven't been paid. They regularly wait until the first week of the quarter to hire their TAs. Much of my mental energy goes to how to find enough work for the next quarter.

Currently I'm working 3o hrs a week at two different jobs because I know that one job will be running out of funding after this quarter. I have no promise that the other job will employ me over the summer although the staff seems to be working under that impression. My jobs pay the rent and utilities, Beorn's 1o-15 hrs a week as an undergrad tech support monkey pays for our groceries. All our other expenses are covered by student loans. I know we shouldn't be taking out loans for grad school, but it's preferable to the credit card debt we would be running up if we weren't in school.

The problem is that it's difficult for me to get any of my own research done while working 30 hrs a week and wondering how I will pay my rent in a couple of months. This really hit home for me last month when I went to that big conference. My poverty in comparison to most of the people there really hit me. While many attendees were enjoying their stay at the Hilton and touring one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I was commuting to my mom's studio apartment.

Clio Bluestocking hits many of the same notes of anxiety in her post on graduate student jealousy and bitterness:

The limited funds for graduate students also increased our anxieties. Our program admitted far more students than it had seats in classes. One professor actually agreed to teach a seminar consisting of over 20 students when the average number of students was usually 12. Our program also admitted far more students than it had funding to support. The average number of t.a. positions was 25, while the average number of applicants for those positions was 80. Out-of-state students were lured to the school with a promise of a t.a. funding, only to not have the position renewed for the next year. This left them with out-of-state tuition to pay, no insurance, no income, and no hope for any future funding because now, having to work other jobs, they were not progressing at an acceptable rate. They were never given any reason, nor was anyone else, for having not been renewed. The only common denominator for getting or having a t.a. contract renewed--at least as far as any of us could determine--was whether or not your advisor sat on the graduate committee that year. Thus, from year to year, your funding, if you were so lucky as to receive it, was in jeopardy.

Even as a unionized TA and instructor, I found myself without certain benefits that were available to just about every other employee in the state. Exhibit A: Disability insurance. After a hard labor at the birth of my son, I needed to time time off to heal, and the state of California offers six weeks of semi-paid disability/maternity leave to new mothers. That is, of course, if your employer has been paying into the state disability pool. Which my university--a state university--did not. So I was back at work two weeks after my son's birth, still torn and swollen and, yes, so engorged with breast milk that I couldn't swing my arms when I walked. Teaching was the last thing on my mind in those days, and it wasn't fair to my students.

Just about everyone who has worked as a TA or lecturer has tales like this one.

Bottom line: Many TAs and lecturers are stuck where they are because they have dedicated much of their time to their students and to improving their teaching, while their better-funded colleagues undertook research that led to publication in academic journals. Guess which activity is more valued at the research university? That's right: the people who care most about teaching, those who throw themselves into it wholeheartedly at the expense of their own research and promotion, are those who are least rewarded. And in a decade when a typical humanities tenure-track job opening attracts hundreds of applications, it's not likely this situation will improve for most of us anytime soon.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks, a recovering academic and an fledgling academic technologist, blogs at The Clutter Museum and Museum Blogging.