English Department Instructors are over-worked and massively underpaid. - English Instructor Arizona State University Employee Review

Management continues to pile on more and more students, so that what started as a 4 course load each semester is now a 5 course load per semester with NO COMPENSATION for that change. This means that for a measly 36K per year (lowest salary for English in the whole country) we are expected to offer individual attention to 125 first year college students and help them learn to write. Never mind that many arrive unable to write a sentence and needing much more help to get used to college, we are expected to take care of them. We're paid for 40 hours a week, but typically have to work 80 hours a week to keep up. We're expected to be grading machines. A typical semester requires that we grade (line edit, explain problems, mark errors) over a 1000 assignments. The recommended maximum number of first year writing students per instructor (per the NCTE) is 65. We're being forced to teach 125. When I got here 10 years ago, I had 76 students each semester. Now, I have 125. Our load has increased by 46% and there's been little or no compensation for that increase. We're asked to give more than is humanly possible. And we care about our students. We want them to succeed. Yet ASU continues to Waltmartify the educational experience by exploiting staff. Do NOT EVER COME HERE to work as an Instructor. You'll regret it if you do.