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Maybe I missed this in my skimming of the article, but; the obvious question is ‘what fraction of their time do these instructors spend on Udemy work’. I doubt

by jrmg 2y ago

Maybe I missed this in my skimming of the article, but; the obvious question is ‘what fraction of their time do these instructors spend on Udemy work’. I doubt most people teaching a course or two at a traditional learning institution get paid a full time salary either - even at institutions that pay well - because their work is not full time.

ghaff 2y ago
Adjuncts apparently get paid pretty poorly. But the fact that it's hard to make a living as an adjunct professor/lecturer doesn't change the fact that it's at least as hard to make a living doing online courses.
- jrmg 2y ago
  Right - and I’m all for paying a living wage for all jobs. Being a full time professor should pay well. And what we pay teachers in most places in the USA is ridiculously little. What I’m saying is that we generally don’t expect that part-time jobs get paid as much, in total, as full-time jobs. Someone working 1/4 time getting paid 1/4 what a full time person gets (maybe a little more - or a little less - for the flexibility and/or privilege) is normal. So asking what fraction of their time Udemy instructors spend on Udemy tasks seems like a prerequisite for judging the fairness of their pay, and I don’t think this article covers that.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I imagine it varies a lot and probably depends on what you have in your head and the design of custom graphics and the creation of real-world video content. But I would assume a month of work would probably cover most new course content (and could be less)--given my experience in putting presentations together for conferences. That said, given that assumption which I think is at least somewhere in the ballpark, typical revenues most seem to get don't really move the needle except as a very part-time hobby. Once upon a time I had a shareware business which brought in $7K/year for a bit but that only made financial sense in that it was something I enjoyed doing for a time and I walked away once I was sort of tired of it.
  - otteromkram 2y ago
    Post secondary professors have a median income of just over $84,000 in the US [0], which is above the median personal income of about $42,000 for 2023 [1]. Both those numbers took me less than a minute to find. [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Postsecondary-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Posts... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I strongly suspect that the income for lecturers at community colleges and continuing education (which is what someone on Udemy is competing with) is quite a bit lower.

by jrmg 2y ago

ghaff 2y ago

Adjuncts apparently get paid pretty poorly. But the fact that it's hard to make a living as an adjunct professor/lecturer doesn't change the fact that it's at least as hard to make a living doing online courses.

jrmg 2y ago
Right - and I’m all for paying a living wage for all jobs. Being a full time professor should pay well. And what we pay teachers in most places in the USA is ridiculously little. What I’m saying is that we generally don’t expect that part-time jobs get paid as much, in total, as full-time jobs. Someone working 1/4 time getting paid 1/4 what a full time person gets (maybe a little more - or a little less - for the flexibility and/or privilege) is normal. So asking what fraction of their time Udemy instructors spend on Udemy tasks seems like a prerequisite for judging the fairness of their pay, and I don’t think this article covers that.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I imagine it varies a lot and probably depends on what you have in your head and the design of custom graphics and the creation of real-world video content. But I would assume a month of work would probably cover most new course content (and could be less)--given my experience in putting presentations together for conferences. That said, given that assumption which I think is at least somewhere in the ballpark, typical revenues most seem to get don't really move the needle except as a very part-time hobby. Once upon a time I had a shareware business which brought in $7K/year for a bit but that only made financial sense in that it was something I enjoyed doing for a time and I walked away once I was sort of tired of it.
- otteromkram 2y ago
  Post secondary professors have a median income of just over $84,000 in the US [0], which is above the median personal income of about $42,000 for 2023 [1]. Both those numbers took me less than a minute to find. [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Postsecondary-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Posts... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I strongly suspect that the income for lecturers at community colleges and continuing education (which is what someone on Udemy is competing with) is quite a bit lower.