A calling sans benefits.

Let's talk cash.

It's not that I don't like my job; I do. I teach! I conduct college English courses of many descriptions for everyone from freshmen to seniors. I get to read books for a living and help students compose clear prose! Every semester, my students amaze me with their diligence, creativity, and kindness. And my evaluations are positive; one school put me in the top 10 percent of all composition instructors. I'm a happy twenty-five-year-old: Give me a studio apartment and some pizza and I'm all right.

So I feel sheepish about mentioning this, especially in tough times, but...Could I Please Have a Raise?

It's embarrassing to discuss one's finances; I do it only for the larger good. Let' s look at some numbers.

According to the Kansas City Star (September 13, 1993), local high-school and elementary teachers make about $32,587 a year. They receive health insurance and other benefits. Some must dodge bullets, it's true, but you can't have everything. Their college counterparts do well, also. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 25, 1993), the average pay of a full-time professor at a four-year school is $56,658; at a two-year school it runs $45,412; associate professors get $47,432 and $38,040 respectively; assistant professors, $35,511 and $32,671; and instructors, $26,129 and $28,637. I know what you are thinking: "To blazes with MTV. The real money' s in college teaching!" But this happy tale has a dark side. Consider part-time college English instructors.

They want full-time work. They teach four to six classes per semester, which means they work anywhere from forty to sixty to eighty hours per week. (Many of their full-time colleagues teach zero to three classes.) Part-timers teach 33 to 66 percent of all classes offered; more on this later. Before taxes, part-timers make between $11,568 and $17,352 per year. (One of my schools pays $1,446 per class per semester. If a part-timer teaches eight classes a year, he or she receives $11,568; twelve classes equals $17, 352.) I teach four classes per semester, work about fifty hours a week, and can expect to make around $13,014 this year. Financially, I'm in the median among my area counterparts.

While an undergraduate at a "teaching" college in Iowa, I found that most of my instructors set fire to my passion to learn and demonstrated how to be a devoted teacher. Now I find I am aggravated by tenured, PC professors who supposedly adore fairness and compassion but sock away the dough and perks without a thought of those who are carrying the daily load. As Economics 101 will tell you, low, part-time salaries help pay for full-timers' health insurance. (But that information may be biased; Econ 101 is probably taught by a part-timer.)

Everyone knows that America' s schools are in serious trouble. Everyone, it seems, but those tenured professors who absorb high salaries while doing little teaching. Who knows? Perhaps college students would learn more if their teachers in their basic courses (Composition I and II, Algebra, U.S. History, etc.) were more fairly compensated. Such compensation might help part-timers quit their second jobs and allow them to spend more time grading papers and making creative lesson plans.

How many part-timers are there? At my community college, which has 27,000-plus students, the communications department has 47 full-timers and 122 part-timers, many of whom want full-time work. My second job, at a local university, appears to have the same ratio of full-timers to part-timers. When I was a teaching assistant (1990-92), most of the sections of Comp I and II were taught by people making about $7,600 a year, (This figure did not include roughly $2,500-worth of free tuition each semester.) Nationwide, I would be surprised if there were much deviance from these figures. The real story is that at least half of all college classes are being taught by people working over fifty hours per week for less than $15,000 per year with no benefits.

Higher education is rife with problems: the ridiculous emphasis placed on publishing tangled jargon in obscure journals; the view that teaching impedes research; the PC debacle; the high costs and diminishing returns. But a huge question, currently unaddressed, remains: When are we going to send the message to students that teaching is a noble profession? I'm convinced that part of the reason students don't learn (aside from broken families, drugs, and other social calamities) is that America is telling them--via their teachers' paychecks--that educators--and thus education--really aren't worth much.

In all honesty, my life is a good one. Money aside, I have a great family, wonderful friends, and a B.A. in math that will help me find a more remunerative career. For me, money is only a means to an end: I'd like to marry some day and not subject my future family to poverty. But the real problem is a larger one and it belongs to the whole country.

A recent government study indicated that almost 50 percent of adults have poor reading and math skills. How will America be able to compete in the global economy with such a deficient work force? The citizenry won't get any smarter if low teacher salaries continue to drive our brightest and most ambitious teachers into other professions.

My wonderful jobs, with their high psychic rewards, are luxuries for me. But there are other avenues for volunteer work, and I may be forced to make my contribution in another way. To be competitive in the information age, however, the United States will need expert teachers. The prospects for encouraging and retaining them look less bright all the time.

Tim Wuebker lives in Mission, Kansas. He is working on a novel and a play.