Old Dominion, NC (WZIP 2/19/07) -- A senior professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University made history today by garnering a pay hike by resigning and getting himself re-hired by the University as entry-level assistant professor.Allen Chomsky gave up tenure as a full Professor of Mathematics at LRU at age 48 when he resigned his position.
"Why did you do it?" WZIP asked Chomsky in private interview. "I have several kids in college and my wife and I were finding that we just couldn't make it on my LRU salary and the Federal Food Stamp subsidies that have been part of our benefits package here now since February 6th."
"Then why did you re-apply for an entry-level position in your own Department at LRU again?"
"Because I learned, when I was on a search committee interviewing other applicants, that we were offering better salaries to our in-coming professors at the 'assistant' level than we were to our full professors," said Chomsky. "The whole thing was pretty insane."
When asked if he planned to take his case to the American Association of University Professors to press charges, Chomsky declined to comment.
Mrs. Chomsky, however, volunteered that now they would be able to afford to pay health care premiums again. LRU pays only a percentage of health care premiums of its employees, who must make up the difference in addition to paying for their non-employee members. "Our monthly health care premiums are higher than our mortgage," Mrs. Chomsky told WZIP.
It remains to be seen whether other senior members of the LRU faculty will follow suit after seeing the pay hike that now Assistant Professor Chomsky has garnered for himself. LRU administration officials could not be reached for comment.
1 comment:
A university cannot be expected to give market value raises. By industry standards for professionals, this would mean 108% to 120% of the current market value for each position.
Senior professors should be forced to earn any salary increases by staging sit ins or other non-violent (but disruptive) activities as a type of continuing education. This would make certain they keep these skills sharpened and properly taught to students for more useful purposes, such as protesting the lack of transgender awareness programs on campus.
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