Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 14, 1993 TAG: 9309120334
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHILIP WALZER FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Buchanan, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at George Mason University, makes $149,700 a year. Last year, he taught one graduate class, Economic Philosophy.
Buchanan's teaching load offers a good rule of thumb for freshmen: No matter what the catalog says, don't expect to see those big-name professors on campus.
"I call it a bait-and-switch," said Walter Williams, the Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason. "When the admissions office takes parents around to schools, they'll tell them, `We have this professor who won a Nobel Prize and that professor blah blah blah.' When the kid gets on campus, he does not see those professors."
Not that Williams, a frequent author and conservative commentator, teaches much himself. He taught two courses last school year: Microeconomic Theory and Intermediate Microeconomics. Only one was for undergraduates.
Williams said the Olin Foundation pays nearly all his $101,600 salary: "They're paying me to do the things I do. It's not taxpayers who are doing so. To a very significant degree, the university is getting me free."
Buchanan, who is in his mid-70s, had a different reason for not teaching. He thinks undergraduates are a waste: "The last time I taught undergraduates was way back at VMI. It was the most discouraging experience I ever had. I'll be damned if I go and waste my time with students who are interested in playing."
One of the biggest stars on the University of Virginia faculty is English professor E.D. Hirsch. Hirsch's best-selling book "Cultural Literacy" enraged liberals with its emphasis on Western civilization. But students won't get much of a chance to debate those points with him.
Last year, Hirsch, who earns $101,200, taught two courses, Literature Criticism and Current Issues in Theory, Language and Literature. Both were on the graduate level.
Hirsch could not be reached. But UVa's English department chairwoman, Patricia Spacks, said: "I think it would be very shortsighted, indeed, to think he should be teaching more." Hirsch, she said, is contributing more to education "than anything he would be doing in the classroom."
Teaching demands are slightly higher for other big-name professors in Virginia. The going rate seems to be two courses a semester. At salaries up to $100,000 a year, that comes to $25,000 a course, or about $600 a hour in class. Some examples:
Julian Bond, civil rights activist and former Georgia state senator, taught two courses at UVa in the spring on the history of the civil rights movement and Southern politics. His salary for the term: $47,500.
Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and recently named poet laureate of the United States: Four creative-writing courses at UVa last year for $100,000.
Poet Nikki Giovanni: Four poetry classes at Tech for $66,400.
Richard Rorty, a controversial UVa philosopher whose questioning of universal moral truths has gotten him into trouble, taught slightly more for his $141,000 salary last year. He had five courses. One was for undergraduates.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***