Critics of higher education love to suggest that we professors are living it up. But I’m not. I have less than $100 in my checking account. I’ve been ignoring a recurring robo-call from a company trying to collect a $50 payment that is overdue. The gutters on my house are falling off. My electric bill is late, and I can’t drive my car because the check-engine light is on.
Oh, and I received tenure this past spring. I’m not kidding. And no, I don’t have a fat savings account, and no, I am not irresponsible with money.
My salary is average for someone of my rank, discipline, and college size. If you’re a college professor, people assume that if you don’t have a healthy bank account, you must be a closet gambler or have some other hidden addiction. But my financial predicament is a result of bootstrapping my way into academe, and the harsh reality of leaping from rural Arkansas to a professor’s job in upstate New York with no financial support system along the way. Indeed, it was not a leap at all but a long, slow, humiliating slog.
Bootstrapping My Way Into the Ivory Tower – The Chronicle of Higher Education