“I feel like I’m not respected.”
That’s the first thing a senior American Sign Language lecturer said when I asked her how she felt about her compensation from Penn.
I’ve taken ASL at Penn for the past year. Learning how to sign and being immersed in Deaf culture has been a truly transformative experience — one that wouldn’t have been possible without my amazing ASL professor, who cares so deeply about us and our success.
When I learned that Penn’s ASL instructors have received a raise just once in the past two decades, that they’re paid less than those at any other Ivy League or Philadelphia-area school, that my own ASL professor — who works full-time — receives fewer retirement benefits than fast-food workers, I was floored.
All of Penn’s ASL lecturers, including mine, are Deaf. I mention this because in the United States, it is extremely difficult for Deaf people to find and retain jobs commensurate with their educational background and experiences. In fact, when the lecturer I spoke to applied to her current role at Penn, it was the only ASL teaching job available in the area. Although it paid $20,000 less than her prior role at another university and offered no retirement benefits, it was her only option. She was forced to take the pay cut in order to continue supporting her family.
Granted, this is not an isolated scenario, and it most certainly speaks to a broader social issue surrounding a lack of employment opportunities and job security for the Deaf community. But even in comparison to other universities, both across the Ivy League and within Philadelphia, Penn is severely lacking in the compensation it provides to its ASL instructors.
According to a letter sent to Penn administrators by the AAUP-Penn Task Force on Health, Safety, and Disability, Penn pays its ASL instructors up to thousands of dollars less than other schools in the Philadelphia area. The most telling example of this is between Penn and Swarthmore College, with the former offering ASL instructors $5,700 per course taught and the latter offering up to $11,000. Unlike nearly every other school in Philadelphia or the Ivy League that offers ASL, Penn provides no retirement benefits to its full-time ASL lecturers, and no pay raises to its adjunct lecturers. To top it all off, the University doesn’t take prior experience into account when setting salaries for ASL lecturers, meaning that an instructor with 20 years of ASL teaching experience gets paid exactly the same amount as someone else with just one year under their belt.
This isn’t even a new issue. The lecturer I spoke with discussed at length the numerous attempts by several members of the ASL department over the past few years to request an increase in compensation. The response from Penn administrators? “We don’t have the money.”
A university with a multibillion-dollar endowment “doesn’t have the money” to pay its own professors fairly? I seriously doubt that.
Penn needs to do better. Regardless of whether this disparity is due to ignorance, convenience, or outright discrimination on the part of Penn administrators, it needs to stop. Skimping on compensation for its own instructors is unacceptable. Doing so for a group of all-Deaf instructors, who have historically faced difficulties with finding and retaining jobs? That’s simply inexcusable. The University can keep priding themselves on diversity, equity, and inclusion, but they need to prove that they actually mean it, starting with their own professors.
To do so, Penn must change its compensation structure for its ASL lecturers to a step system with incremental raises to account for experience and seniority. This is not a new concept by any means: it’s already the norm for teachers in K-12 schools, and it makes logical sense that an instructor with more relevant experience should be better compensated. Penn must also begin providing better benefits to its lecturers. According to the lecturer I spoke to, the University matches 0% of retirement contributions for its full-time ASL lecturers. This is practically unheard of in higher education and in the workplace environment in general, with 92% of U.S. employers matching employees’ 401(k) contributions.
If moral and ethical obligation isn’t enough reason, it’s also in Penn’s best interest to remedy this disparity as soon as possible. ASL is one of the most popular languages at Penn, and classes are both hard to get into and nearly always full. That’s something Penn can and should be proud of. But there might not be anything left to be proud of much longer.
ASL lecturers are leaving the University at an alarming rate, primarily because other institutions in the area are offering higher salaries and better benefits. For this very reason, Penn also has a very hard time filling vacant lecturer positions in the ASL department. In fact, according to the lecturer I interviewed, Penn has had an open full-time ASL lecturer position for two years now, but nobody even wants to apply to the job because the compensation Penn is offering is just so low.
This is incredibly concerning because it’s reminiscent of a very similar trend that occurred just a couple of years ago with Penn’s Arabic department. Because Penn couldn’t retain enough Arabic language instructors, the University’s Middle East Center lost its federal Title VI funding which almost resulted in the Center ceasing to exist. Although Penn is now independently funding the Center, it is a shell of its former self. History can, and will, repeat itself if Penn doesn’t act now to retain its instructors and protect its ASL program from collapse.
At the end of my conversation with the lecturer, she told me that she’s planning on leaving Penn this year after accepting a position at another school: one that’s offering her higher pay and better benefits. However, if Penn offers her the compensation she deserves — in her words, if they decide she’s “worth it” — she may consider returning.
For the sake of my beloved ASL professor, my peers, and future students whose ASL classes will profoundly affect their lives and the way they see the world, as mine did, I can only hope that Penn’s administrators see reason and increase ASL lecturer compensation before it’s too late.
GARV MEHDIRATTA is a College first year studying health and societies from San Francisco, Calif. He also currently serves as the DP’s Crossword Editor. His email is garv@sas.upenn.edu.
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