On a without salary basis
UCLA advertised an academic job with no pay.
The job listing for an assistant adjunct professor was very clear: “The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an assistant adjunct professor on a without salary basis. Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”
Sure, that seems normal. Skip minimum wage: we’re talking no pay at all.
The listing went on to describe what the person hired could expect: “Responsibilities will include: teaching according to the instructional needs of the department. Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or equivalent discipline and have significant experience and strong record in teaching chemistry or biochemistry at the college level. The University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry are interested in candidates who are committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities, and to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity.”
All that, for $00,000 dollars a year. (This works out to $00.00 an hour.)
Candidates were asked to submit a CV, cover letter, a statement of teaching (and an optional statement of research) and three to five letters of reference.
UCLA wants the best, in exchange for nothing at all.
They got some angry emails. They’d tell us how many but that requires expensive math skills.
And of course several people compared the unpaid position for an academic with a Ph.D. to the $4 million salary the university pays its head men’s basketball coach, Mick Cronin.
Basketball is important. Simple.
Yes, but also time and a half overtime, plus the U will match up to 10% of the employee’s salary to a 403(b) account, and it offers a generous pension plan based on the top three year’s of the employee’s earnings.
You really have to look at the fine print.
snicker
And the idea that it is boosting up the credentials, beefing up the resume? They want someone who already has a good resume and good credentials.
Teaching is HARD work. Too many people don’t realize that, and I don’t think there is a college administrator on this planet who knows it, and if they do, they don’t want to admit it. They rarely come out of teaching positions, having instead been trained to administrate.
Bet they aren’t drowning in applications.
I’ve read that schools do this when there is an arrangement for a professor from another university to teach on a temporary basis or where the professor has funding from another source. The position is filled, but they have to advertise it. They don’t expect anyone to take the job on those terms.
Eava @4
Well, that’s interesting. What odd rule insists they must advertise for a phantom position? And if they must, why tweet it? Couldn’t they just stick an advertisement in one of the local free papers?
The requirement to advertise is generally a legal one for a state job, not only that they must advertise it for a specific period of time, but also where it must be advertised. For example, my first postdoc position was a organized as a state position for reasons beyond my comprehension, and although it was promised that it was mine, it still had to appear on the university web site and some handful of official printed publications for six weeks and even including a standardized testing session if certain conditions were met. I had actually been working at that job for over four weeks by the time the “application period” ended (not officially earning any money, of course). I thought that it was absurd that some potential applicants might be taking some official standardized state test in hopes of landing a job that they could never hope to have.
It’s a not-so-secret secret that federal research grants for certain funds are also similarly predestined, although the calls for proposals must still go out through the usual venues.
My husband once applied for a job which had weirdly specific requirements in a very strange combination of skills – all of which, for various reasons, he could fulfil. The recruiter was utterly confounded by this; they already had someone lined up for the job, and for the reasons James said, they had advertised it in such a way that they hadn’t expected any outside applicants.
Yeah, if they advertised to fill my position, they might need someone who can teach Biology, Physical Science, Theatre, GIS, and English. I’m surely not the only person in the country that could do that, but if advertised that way, they would most likely have me in mind. But since I already work there? They don’t have to.
Back when job hunting after graduate school, I recall seeing the occassional long, very detailed job posting. They read like someone’s resume or job history. Those were generally ignored. We figured that they were trying to justify hiring a particular person (“no one else met our requirements”). There were some jobs where one was to preferentially hire a US citizen (eg government contract work) unless one didn’t find any that qualified.