Teachers are not known for making a lot of money. While some states and districts are giving pay raises and incentives for teachers to remain in their areas, the respect is still not there. Although teaching is a profession and teachers are professionals, they usually are not paid and held in the high regards of other professionals such as doctors and lawyers.
I think in society’s eyes, college professors are the most prominent of teachers. This is likely due to the difficulty of the academic materials that they usually teach. In addition, many college professors hold a doctorate degree. This makes them seem ‘smarter’ or ‘more important’ than other teachers. In my teaching experience, I have found it to be a general rule that the higher grade you teach, the more respect you get from the general public.
My question is this, why should college professors make more money than general public education teachers? I know all of the underlying factors. But let us talk about actual work.
I had many college courses where my teachers did very little work. Granted some college professors take their work very seriously. However, it seemed that my graduate teachers actually did less teaching than my undergraduate teachers. In my graduate courses, the teachers were more likely to divide the chapters of the text among the students. The students were then to study the material and present it to the class. While we did learn from our presentations, what did the teacher do? We spent most of the class time preparing our presentations. The professors would usually give us the option to either stay at school and work or go somewhere else. The professor would then sit back and grade us based on our presentation.
Many of us have had one college professor that we can call a true mentor. However, I think we have all been on the other end too. We have all had those college professors that cancelled classes or just did not show up. They did not care if you came to class or not. There was no one to hold them accountable to the teaching they were paid to do.