I'm a college professor myself. It is a thankless job. You spend more than 20 years in school, washing dishes, working at a dead end job waiting for that moment when you finally get to teach.<p>My teaching job pays about $30.00/Hr. However I only get to work about 25 hours a week or so. It's not much money to live on.<p>Also realize the pressures of college teaching:<p>Society needs you to teach skills to the students that they will need to excel. The students have been given a free ride all the way though High School.<p>How do you teach C programming to students that cannot do any algebra and have no understanding of logic?<p>If you make the class hard enough for them to excel in the global marketplace, all of the students drop out.<p>It you make it easy enough for everyone to pass, you have scarcely covered the first one or two chapters of the book.
Maybe being an assistant professor of Native American studies is a lifestyle choice to be indulged in by people who are either married to or descended from people who did commercially valuable work? The engineering department has spots available for us kids who have to work for a living.
If she is current on other financial obligations, should't she be able to finance that $30K at much less than 10%? So, the interest portion would be $3K/year. Is that a significant portion of a Dartmouth Assistant Professor's income?<p>I live in the MidWest, and cleaning "ladies" want $20-$25/hour under-the-table. Perhaps she should take on such work on Saturdays to reduce her debt load.<p>[As an aside, I can't understand how bad America can be if one can make this much cleaning houses. Some of these people aren't even all that good at it!]
The comments on the site are ... pleasant. I don't think I've ever seen a blog post where the author admits to having some personal flaw where the first 10 comments aren't "HAH UR DUM". Looks like the Chronicle attracts slightly more intelligent readers than the average blog.
Many people have worked off far larger debts on far smaller salaries, many of them working far more difficult jobs than being a college professor. Not to mention those to whom these kinds of educational opportunities were never even a possibility. A little perspective is in order.
While I empathize with the difficulties she surmounted, I think it not good to be ashamed of where you came from. To the contrary, attaining the recognition that she did starting with the humble beginnings should be something to feel proud of.