Some Job Benefits Shrinking

[livingdeb]

Four pieces of disappointing news about working at my employer:

1) The current tuition proposal is to raise it almost 5% per year for the next two years. This is a compromise between not raising tuition and having the money we want. This is the minimum increase that will allow us to continue providing the same services. This amount does not allow for any raises. (I want a raise, but I don't want tuition to go up even more than proposed.)

2) The state has just asked all its departments to turn in budgets with a 5% cut from last year, just in case. The recession is apparently hitting our state, too, of course. Obviously, that will not allow for raises either and may also raise the workload as more people are laid off.

3) A new goal is to add a shuttle bus stop to the new medical center located in the old airport without making any of the current bus routes any longer. Meanwhile, they began the experimentation, slated to last two months, by adding it to the end of my bus route, thus lengthening my travel time to work by 10 minutes and lengthening my wait time to and from work by 10 minutes. Specifically, my commute time, which has been an hour in each direction while the shuttles weren't running between semesters, is still an hour each way now that shuttles are running. This is for a 3.5-mile commute. It is kind of annoying that Robin can be asleep when I'm leaving from work and also asleep by the time I get home, and his job is twice as far away as mine and he works just as many hours.

4) There is still so much construction all over campus that it can be difficult getting where one needs to go.

Some people are also angry that our football coach is getting a raise during a salary freeze period. I think I don't mind him getting a raise because during his tenure, revenues from athletics have increased so much that athletics is back to supporting itself (even including this raise) and not having to be subsidized with additional funds from academia. I'm not totally sure I'm for him getting a 66% raise or a raise that makes him the highest-paid college coach or a raise involving more than twice what I will make in my entire lifetime.

Comments

inefficient commute

[fraeuleinchen.livejournal.com]

I know it's impractical for much of the year (too hot) but I can't help but think that the solution to your commuting dilemma is to walk the 3.5 miles each way (or one way); then you'd have some exercise nipped in the bud - killing two birds with one stone. But I know it'd be logistically problematic (you'd have to change at work, probably, and carry a parasol)...