The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 19th, 2014
Amid the public-relations back and forth over Starbucks’s new partnership with Arizona State University’s online degree program, an online comment caught our eye:
This is a major PR boost for ASU as well, and considering many adjuncts make less than the baristas they'll be teaching, I doubt ASU is losing money here. —Steve Foerster
Forgetting, for a moment, the financial big picture, is it possible that Starbucks baristas will be better paid than their instructors?
The answer, it seems, is no. That’s because some of Arizona State’s tenured and tenure-track faculty members, along with some of its full-time lecturers, make up part of the instructional staff that teaches the nearly 11,000 students enrolled in ASU Online, says Philip Regier, executive vice provost and dean of ASU Online and Extended Campus.