Phew, lots of issues here, hopefully I can address a few. I was adjunct faculty, not full-time, which is a different world. Only teaching quality guaranteed rehiring each semester, not tenure, publishing, or schmoozing. Accordingly, it is a meritocracy far different from the incentives tenured faculty live in.
SDSU has always had a pretty good student evaluation system, polling students annonymously at the end of each semester about what they learned from their professor. A study I did found that, controlled for different courses and other variables, students on average learned far more from our stable of part-timers than the full-time faculty. Yet we were paid one-third, per course, as much as full timers teaching the same thing. And we often taught more students than full-timers. (BTW, that’s controlled for average grades handed out too). Yes, full-timers do some advising, administration, and research that part-timers don’t, but that does not fully explain the pay gap. So yes, that grates on you after a while. Add to that a foot in the private sector and one tends to switch from flaming liberal to libertarian lite, as I did. Anyway, to address the charge of hypocrisy, my pension of $540/month and health care I see as deferred compensation for years of relatively low pay.
Based on how our governor and legislature act, our state economy will continue to underperform our neighbors, and far more fiscal austerity is in store for us. That should include cuts in overly-generous state pensions, including mine.
