As we wrap up our unit on the Theory of the Firm and we begin to leave perfect competition and monopoly in the dust, we get to turn our attention to the other side of the economic equation...rather than business, we now will start to look at the consumer side of the coin. Rather than looking at what we want to buy, we will need to look at how much do we need to make to buy all that stuff we have managed to convince ourselves we cannot live without!
As a teacher, I knew when I decided to follow this career path I would most likely never get rich. You do not go into education for the money. But on the other hand, I have bills to pay, a cat to feed :), and wants and needs that I too want to satisify. Given the fact that teachers are skilled professionals, that education is a major building block of potential growth for an econmy...why do we get paid so little? Thinking like an economist...why do you think educators get paid the way they do? What does is say about a society that values its bus drivers and trash collectors more than its educators and social workers? What essentially is going to determine the wages we make? Remember, its all about economics!
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Someone may complain teacher’s wages are too low, but really are they? If they were wouldn’t there be a real shortage of teachers? Isn’t that what economics has taught us... if the price is too low, the suppliers would not supply, teachers would not teach. I absolutly agree that teachers are very valuable to the future of a society, and if they’re value were measured by a paycheck they would be grossly undervalued, but teachers don’t just get paid with money. Teaching is one of the careers which gives the most satisfaction, they get compensation for their low wages every time they get students to understand something new or have them comment how much they liked the class… does a bus driver or a trash collector get that? If you take the satisfaction factor, plus the longer vacation factor, and the ability to rule over a bunch of kids factor, it turns out it is not that bad a trade off and hence why so many teachers teach despite the low wages.
In the US, teachers get paid more at public schools than at private schools. So the govt. pays more --- not much more-- to teachers than private institutions. But like Dante said, teaching is a popular profession because the work hours are short (yet depending on what subject you teach, of course you have extra work) and you get a 3-month break every summer.
I wonder if teachers in Scandinavian countries get paid much more. Teachers wages, in my opinion, seem to be at the liberty of the govt.'s social policies and education system. As Mrs. Lewis told me last week, when Clinton was president she got paid more than ever before.
hmm...personally I had never stopped to think exactly WHY teachers get paid so little. And i had NO idea trashcollectors get paid more than teachers.
I really can't think of a very economic reason for this, because it would make sense (at least to me) that teachers should be paid more than other jobs because education is SO crucial to a country's development..as some people say "if you want a future get an education". Governments should certainly create more incentives to create a larger work force in this area.
maybe as Dante said, people who teach teach because of the passion they feel toward this job? And because the respect they get from it as well as the benefits (at least in Korea being a teacher is considered to be the best job for women..cause women can get months off while they are pregnant and don't get fired, as well as many other benefits) and trashcollectors and bus drivers certainly dont get the same respect and acknowkledgement teachers get...so maybe they need MORE incentive than teachers?
I have no idea. haha
Yes I can only agree with what was said before that the reason teachers get paid so little is probably related to the fact that other jobs require more incentive. Even though there are some teachers who do not like their job, the majority of them chose this employment because it is soemthing they love to do and its a job that truly gives them satisfaction. As a teacher, I guess who really appreciate what you're doing every tiem you feel like your students are actually learning soemthing important and that you're making an impact in their lives. True, this isn't a strictly economic perspective, but as mentioned above, you can also look at the reasonable workign hours and the long vacation period. therefore this is the only explanation I can really come up with.
Are we talking hourly wages or yearly, because teachers do get a LOT more vacation time than other occupations... and if we are talking hourly then how much more exactly. It would seem that teachers get paid less because there job does not produce any form of money. So all the wages are based on what some penny pinching government official values it should be.
i never thought about how teachers got paid little...but i can agree that trash collecters and bus drivers get paid more than teachers...if they really do get paid more than teachers..because it takes much more incenitive for someone to want to collect trash over someone to have a comfortable taching room and long vacations.plus noone becomes a teacher unless they love educating kids. but wages for teachers should be higher since they are moulding our societys minds.
Many people have brought up great points about this issue. Teacher's wages are probably lower because of the benefits that come along with teaching - short hours (but plus extra work), long vacations and a fairly constant schedule. I think teaching has a lot to do with satisfaction, and people choose to pursue this career because of the love for working with students. (right ms stephens???)
I think teacher's wages are low to give teachers an incentive to work harder to make more money. College professors make more than high school teachers, so teachers must climb up the ladder to reach an education level where they know their material well enough to teach at universities.
Besides incentives and benefits, I can't really think of any other reasons for the low wages.
Well i don't know..I think that a teacher's wage depends on the working place as well as the level. In Malaysia, teachers who work for the government get very low pay. However, they get alot of other benefits, like coverage for medical, allowance for each child and they also receive a fixed income after they retire. On the other hand, teachers who work in private sector get good pay but they don't get all those benefits which the government offer.
ALso, I think the higher level a teacher teaches, the higher pay he/she receives. Like a college lecturer gets a pretty high pay compared to a high school teacher.
Like what others have said, teachers get long holidays and the working hours are shorter than many other jobs. Therefore, it can be taken as a compensation for the low wage, i guess.
This probably has to do with the fact that there's a surplus of people that want to teach vs people that want to pick up the trash.
Also, I don't agree with the satisfaction factor expressed in Dante's opinion. If there was no money in teaching, there'd be no teaching.
For the same reason the market fails to value quality in consumer goods, i.e. human shortsightedness. People will buy a low-grade widget for $8.99 over a high-quality one for $13.00 that would last twice as long. There's always demand for cheap teachers--it just gets supplied by the lowest "quality" tier of graduates (on average, with many exceptions). If teachers were required to pass a truly rigorous entrance exam, or otherwise demonstrate excellence prior to hiring, wages would have to go way up because then the schools would have to compete with high-wage alternatives available to talented graduates. Instead, having hired mediocre education majors with limited subject knowledge, we are convinced that we can turn them into first-rate teachers by 'assessing' them and then punishing them for satisfying our demand for cheap labor.
I believe that teachers do not get paid highly simply because, despite the lip service that government and politicians give to the importance of education, teaching as a profession is simply not respected by society as a whole. Consider the disrespectful behavior that public school teachers have to deal with from students on a daily basis. Do those same children talk or behave that way to their doctors, policemen, and such?
Someone commented that teachers may be less respected because the requirements are less rigorous. Let me ask that individual - have you ever taken the PRAXIS II Content Knowledge Exam for Secondary math? Foreign languages? Or any other content area for that matter? I encourage you to try it sometime and report your score. Perhaps some research into the topic you are commenting on will be enlightening. Coursework for secondary teachers involves pretty much majoring in the content area they are aiming to teach as well as taking education coursework.
Some of you have suggested that teachers have a longer break and shorter hours than other workers and therefore get paid less. Perhaps some of the other teachers out there can back me up when I say that this is a gross misconception. Please do not forget that teachers have to spend hours outside of class correcting often more than 100 students' work, meeting with parents, helping students, and making plans for the next day.
As a teacher, I go to school at 6:30 a.m. and leave at 5:30 p.m. I used to leave even later, except that I need to get home before it gets dark so that I can go jogging, for injury-related rehabilitative purposes. After I go jogging, I only have time to cook, eat, bathe, and sleep.
Let me comment now on the supposed long breaks that teachers enjoy. In the week-long breaks between quarters, I do grades for the quarter, I make plans for next quarter, and I go to doctor's appointments because I never had any time to do so while school was in session.
Now that it is summer, let me tell you what I am doing. I have gone to doctor's appointments - cardiologist, allergist, dermatologist. I am making plans for next year because I will be teaching four different classes in five different classrooms, in three different buildings.
Yes, teachers love their students and the career can be very rewarding. Nursing is rewarding, but nurses get paid twice as much. Teachers are underpaid because politicians know the dedication that teachers have to their profession and take advantage of it, assuming that teachers will quietly acquiesce with their poor salary for the good of the kids.
Well said. I am a teacher and can confirm that all of what "unknown" has said is true. Most of the public doesn't know what a teacher's day is like because most of the public has never taught. The hours are very long and tiring. When we get home, we don't just forget about our job, but rather we bring it home with us. This may not sound like much, but it can amount to an extra 3-4 hours of extra work per night, not counting the weekends I spend working to prepare better lessons. There is no such thing as being unprepared when you're a teacher, its not in our vocabulary. If you have to stay up until 2am to have lesson plans ready for the next day, then that's what has to be done. However, I do believe that there is an over supply of us teacher's and it is driving wages down -- the taxpayers are getting a great bargain. Thats not to say that I believe a trashman should get paid more than a teacher. At least I know what the US government values more. What a shame. PS: I'll be paying back my students loans until I'm fifty.
I wrote previously that the "quality" of teaching recruits was low because of the short-sightedness of society and resulting low pay/respect. I didn't mean to be disrespectful of teachers under the current system, who as many have pointed out work extremely hard with relatively little pay or other recognition, to say nothing of the "assessment" assault being mounted on them by the political right and, sadly, the political center as well.
But it is undeniable that top students at top universities, (many of whom would otherwise be interested in teaching, as Teach For America, whatever its other faults, has shown), wouldn't consider teaching as a career because it usually means giving up an upper-middle-class existence, and perhaps more importantly is not considered prestigious by their peers or society at large. This contrasts sharply with America's more successful educational rivals.
Yes, teachers in some states have to pass some relatively rigorous exams, and yes, a fair number of excellent teachers manage not to be discouraged by society's best attempts to make them give it up. But someone has to pass those exams and teach our children, and most of our most talented young people are taught to look elsewhere.
An important historical explanation that I think has some weight is that teaching was until a generation or two ago one of the only professions open to educated, intelligent, and talented women. The resulting oversupply, as well as the unfair remuneration of women in general, kept wages low then, and no doubt has influenced today's low wages. The difference is that, however grossly unfair that system was, in those days at least the best and the brightest of ONE of the sexes went into elementary and secondary teaching.
After reading some of the posts here, I see that there is this thinking that teachers get paid less for the long breaks they receive and short hours they work. However, that "3 month break" is hardly 3months, let alone a month. Teachers have to go to multiple meetings throughout the summer and preparing lessons for the next school year. Then, add on all the time outside of school hours that teachers have to do stuff, such as: tutorials, grading papers, filling out paperwork,writing weekly lesson plan reports, and meetings about shit I could care less about (like the 2 hour long district wide meeting I had to attend because some middle school kids brought plastic bottles filled with vodka to school. The meeting was how to spot the differences between someone drinking water and vodka... The school I work at does not allow water bottles, yet we all still had to attend.)The pay isn't too great either. Trying to bring materials into the class is not a walk in the park either. There are countless forums that have to be signed and you'll basically have to buy the material yourself, if you need it soon.
Now that I am done with my lil' rant, to move onto why I feel teachers get paid so little. It's because there is this thinking in the U.S. that "if you can't do, then teach". Which I'm sure is no more the body of people that make of teachers fault. The amount of bad teachers that there are make the reputation for teaching so low. Things like tenure and teacher unions do more to hurt teaching and the students than the good they were originally there to make. The U.S. Educational system is honestly broke. It is keeping all of the bad teachers, while driving away most of the good teacher, since most can barely even keep up with their bills without getting a second job.
Yes my career does have many 'perks'. I will admit having summer 'off' is nice except I am forced to work to catch up on bills. And yes our work day is about 6 hrs. Too bad we spentd countless hours after dismissal preparing lessons and completing assanine paperwork for stakeholders. I love my job, children and have a passion for learning, but I would like to be able to pay bills without a part time job.
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