LCC and 4J Support Services Comparison

I just wrote an analysis about the 4J School District budget and learned that instruction is only about 60% of the 4J school district budget.

I then wondered how my own LCC classes compare.

This term is typical.  My Math 20 class has 28 students.  Each student is paying $93 per credit x 3 credits = $279 for the class.  Thus the college gets a total income of $7,812.

My pay is roughly $3,000 per class.  I will estimate $100 of other instructional expenses of equipment maintenance, photocopying, electricity, etc.  (Those projector bulbs are quite pricey.)  So LCC only uses about $3,100 ÷ $7,800 = 40% of my class tuition on instruction.

All the rest of my class's tuition can go to "support services" and to compensate for less lucrative classes.

Whew!  It seemed amazing that the 4J school district was spending 33% of the district's cost per student on (non-retirement) support services.  But LCC gets to spending almost twice that percentage on expenses other than instruction.

Yet I am not complaining.  I have already invested countless hours creating my online lecture notes and tests, and setting up Moodle to do homework grading.  So teaching each class requires about 30 hours of class time and about 10 hours each for grading, preparation, and corresponding with students (mostly by e-mail, sometimes by phone).  So each class is only about sixty hours of work.

My take-home pay rate is thus about $46 per hour.  That is sufficient for a worry-free job that allows me to also be home with my boys as much as I want.

But the pay rate is actually not that great.  I do not get retirement account money since I am part-time.  I could be getting health insurance, but by waiving it and using my wife's policy I have slightly greater take-home pay.  Since most jobs have 30% of their compensation in benefits my comparable pay rate is only $46 ÷ 1.3 = $35 per hour.  Not impressive for having two Master's degrees, in a city with a slightly highter cost of living than national average.