My previous post (sorry it was so long) leads to this second post on teacher mobility, also connected with the Wert report. El Diario Montañés, published an article on 24 February with the title “Rector UAB: el sueldo de los docentes es poco competitivo para atraer talento” (http://www.eldiariomontanes.es/agencias/20130224/mas-actualidad/sociedad/rector-uab-sueldo-docentes-poco_201302241101.html). In this article, Ferran Sancho, interviewed by EFE, explains that “Sunshine and good weather” are not enough to attract major international talent to our universities, considering that the basic salary for a tenured teacher is only 33,000 euros a year (with no complements). Apparently, Dutch university teachers make twice more (though if you check the website http://www.prospects.ac.uk/higher_education_lecturer_salary.htm, you’ll see that in Britain, the salary for lecturers ranges from 35 to 46,0000 euros at junior level).
Sancho claims that a full professor may be making 80,000 a year (after taxes) by the time s/he retires at 70. I’ll add that this might be so after being tenured for 40 years at least and having completed all research assessments to satisfaction (5 or 6). I doubt that many full professors even reach 65,000 euros. Apparently, Sancho, just appointed president of the Asociación Catalana de Universidades Públicas (ACUP) plans to run a study comparing retributions for all Spanish universities. I’m not sure what for, as we already know that Catalan teachers get less money than anyone else and also that for those of us living in ultra-expensive Barcelona our salaries are a joke. We’re just glorified blue-collar workers.
I’ll complete the figures: 33,000 – 27% taxes = 24090 : 14 = 1720. Basically, a tenured junior university teacher makes less than 2,000 or around 2,000 euros a month, since soon we start getting complements for antiquity (they do not count for pensions). This after, on average, 10 years or more of gruelling preparation for tenure. The supposedly very-well paid full professor would make 4,200 at the most. This might seem a lot but please remember that very few tenured teachers ever become full professors and, so, most make around 2,500 or less even after 20 years (or more) teaching. Also remember that our salaries are not only frozen but also decimated by both the Catalan and the Spanish governments, who have decided to rob us of part of our wages (the June and December ‘extra wages’ are not a bonus but a deferred payment for our work each semester).
“Sunshine and good weather” are not enough for us, national ‘talent’, either. As happens with the medicine doctors, we are all vocational professionals only too happy to have the chance to work at something we love doing. This is why we accept salaries that do not compensate at all for the many years of preparation and the hard work we need to do every day. Having said that, I’ll finish by stressing what students often ignore: it’s much, much worse in the case of associates, now 50% of our staff, paid less than 800 euros a month for teaching 3 subjects –what many full professors do– and doing in addition much research that benefits all, as they patiently wait years and years for tenure that never materialises…