More meanness at Mannes School of Music
NewsThe college is refusing to compensate students for tuition missed during a recent teachers’ strike. It seems to be part of its hardline attitude to students who pay $53,000 a year for less and less benefit.
Here’s an email leaked to slippedisc.com:
Dear (parents),
(Name redacted) forwarded to me your email exchange regarding the lessons that (student) missed as result of the recent strike. While I empathize with all New School students and their parents, I am writing to confirm what (redacted) has already communicated: faculty are not obligated to make up lessons that were missed during the strike. While make-up lessons could have been negotiated by the University as part of the tentative agreement that the faculty recently ratified, they were not. As such, faculty are not required to make up struck work. I invite you to address further concerns regarding this matter with the New School administration. We are unfortunately unable to address them further at the faculty level.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
David
—
DAVID T. LITTLE, PhD
CHAIR, PROGRAM IN COMPOSITION
To be clear, the faculty are declining to provide makeup lessons because the university will not pay for them. Regrettably faculty had no choice but to take this position. If students don’t like it, and I’m sure they don’t, they should complain to the New School administrative leadership, not department chairs among the faculty.
Yeah, I’m sure the faculty lobbied very hard for makeup pay so they could provide makeup lessons and grade the work products of students (eyeroll.gif)
My father was an administrator for technical colleges and he always said college profs were the laziest members of any professional education communities; more of the same here, I guess.
Your father was an administrator for a college and he said that the professors were lazy. I know nothing about your father or the college he was part of. I can tell you that in the case of Mannes, we’re mainly talking about adjuncts being paid by the hour—Contingent faculty with little job security and being grossly underpaid. Go check Mannes’s form 990 to find out the hefty salaries that its administrators make. I have serious doubts about how much that cohort of president, deans, deanlings, deanlets, really work.
You should read comments from teacher and students below. Methinks your case is not what you make it to be.
Grossly underpaid at $200 to $300 per hour? And what sort of job security should they have? They’re part time jobs? And yes, the president and provost earn too much, but most of the Mannes administrators are paid poorly, actually.
You don’t know the Mannes faculty. I worked there several years and it was a phenomenally engaged group.
The simple and plain fact is that faculty received full pay and benefits while striking. They were paid by the university completely, but did not and are not providing the services they were paid for, meaning the students classes and lessons. This is a lot of money and how does anyone expect the university to pay twice? Maybe the faculty who took the money and didn’t teach, might think again about this from and ethical and moral perspective. And, I am a faculty member there, so no lectures about what’s right and don’t try and make believe the faculty weren’t PAID IN FULL, including health benefits while on strike. And guess, what, I have made up my lessons on my own, because I was paid. The students should ask their teachers for the money back, not the university.
Really? Hourly, which always used to be the bulk of individual lessons, were paid? And are now refusing to teach? Sounds like things would have changed- a lot- from when I was there…
I agree, but the proportion of tuition paid for lessons is far more than what faculty is paid.
You were all paid for the entirety of the strike but won’t give us students the lessons you were paid for. Why should the university have to pay twice. Why don’t you give us what we are taking out loans for? Not to mention the teachers that don’t give you all the lessons you are owed, strike or otherwise. The faculty are ripping off the students.
Allow me to let you in on a little secret…
Many of these teachers could care less about their students. They can easily sleep at night knowing that you will never get a job in music or that you will endure daily verbal assaults by Lateisha and crew over at Burger Queen. It makes them feel more powerful. They simply show up at conservatories, etc. to: 1. Get paid for doing a minimal amount of work, and 2. Be worshiped (I won’t get into some of the other “activities” because Slipped Disc keeps us up to date on all of that)
I was at Juilliard for six years. My world-famous teacher, who was also a world-famous performer, was notorious for not teaching properly. For about 55 out of the 60 minutes, he would pretend that he was listening as he wrote out his weekly budget and then shake my hand at the end of the lesson. Most of the time he wouldn’t even make eye contact. Everyone who studied with him said the same thing but no one dared to protest for good reason. It cost my a few hundred thousand dollars, which I will NEVER get back through music. They are literally messing with people’s lives but as youngsters we don’t realize it at the time.
Yes, I’ve had piano teachers like that. One used to baby-sit her grand-daughter and one day I just packed up my music and walked out right in the middle of it.
I had to switch teachers at a famous conservatory because the first started falling asleep during lessons. But the Dean really made things difficult when I requested to switch. He directly threatened me claiming that it would cause a big political war. Imagine being “punished” because your teacher falls asleep during lessons and you decide not to accept it. That’s the world that we live in.
Why would the university pay the faculty twice??? They were paid while they were on the picket line. Paid fully with insurance and all other benefits? How about the teachers provide the classes to the students that they were actually paid for instead of trying to get paid twice for something they didn’t provide in the first place. The students and parents deserve better than being misled into thinking that the faculty were not paid while on strike when they were. I have to work when I am paid, why aren’t these teachers being held to the same normal standard? Why the university paid the people who were on strike doesn’t make any sense to me either.
Not true. Faculty were paid in full during the strike. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you.
Faculty *were* paid, at the increased rate negotiated in the agreement that ended the strike.
Actually, faculty received back pay at the new rate negotiated through the strike.
Dr. Little simply passed the buck. You get better replies from customer service representatives at the phone company.
So much for an educational institution making it about students first, which is why Mannes School of Music exists.
I don’t often say WTF, but WTF? Manhattan already has too many music schools.
Dear Students,
Because at Mannes, your education is the same whether you were taught by one of our esteemed faculty or by nobody.
Hope you had a good winter break, hope to see you in class. Or not.
Sincerely,
DAVID T. LITTLE, PhD
CHAIR, PROGRAM IN COMPOSITION
P.S. For graduating seniors, don’t bother scheduling a performance of one of your compositions, because as our school motto goes: “Silence is Golden at Mannes”
This headline should be changed to New School faculty took the money and ran. As a parent, I sympathized with the faculty, until I just found out that THEY WERE ALL PAID, including health benefits, while my son received almost no instruction. I had thought these faculty members, who were on strike, received no pay or benefits, because that’s how I believed it all worked, but the school actually paid them the entire time. And, it turns out, a lot of these private lesson faculty make nearly $300 an hour. And that bothers me too, as they claimed during the strike they were being paid poverty wages, but tell me, how are poverty wages equal to $300 an hour. That’s 20 times the minimum wage in the state of New York.
At the end, there is a huge crescendo of electronic music before the parents cannibalize the faculty…
That’s amazing. So, if I do the math right, a lesson teacher at Mannes who gets $250 an hour and teaches 10 students makes $70,000 a year for 10 hours per week, for 28 weeks of work. With no preparation prior to the lesson, no tests to grade, and only one student to teach for each class. And these people went on strike and won’t provide make-up lessons even though they were paid by the school? Pretty sweet deal for a “mean school.” How can I get a gig like that?
There must be some legal recourse for the students.
They’ve paid someone for something that has not been delivered. Who is the someone that has their money?
For once, I agree with you. Hopefully the NYT will pick up on this story and shame Mannes and the New School into doing the right thing.
The someone who has their money is the faculty that were paid but haven’t taught their classes. I guess the university could sue them for it, but after that horrid strike, it’s hard to imagine they will do that.
No, it’s very unlikely the students were paying the teachers directly. The teachers got money from the school but… I expect the school is the entity that accepted money from students for the promise to provide lessons to students by faculty members.
If the negotiation details mentioned elsewhere are true, the school is left holding the bag. The school has negotiated away the obligation of the teachers to provide make up lessons but… it can’t negotiate away the school’s existing obligation to provide lessons to students.
I thoroughly expect that some of the angered parents, parents well-heeled enough to send their offspring to such a school, are lawyers with a knowledge of contract law. Or they know someone who is.
The faculty member’s hand-wave should not be the end of this.
Didn’t my son’s faculty get paid by Mannes to teach what is something like 20 percent of the semester or not? Did they or did they not accept payment to teach and not teach? If they took money to teach, which is what everyone here is saying, then they should be making good to the students. How is any business supposed to pay every faculty member twice, in order for the students to get what they’re entitled to in the first place? If I take money from a client but don’t provide the service that was paid for, there’s a big problem to be dealt with.
It’s worth noting that the United Auto Workers, the union representing Mannes faculty, urged the teachers NOT to teach during the strike. (First hand experience) As is to be expected as it was a strike, but that also meant they were making it as though teaching our students out of a sense of responsibility and duty meant betraying our union brothers and sisters, which is what’s important to the union. That and paying union dues so they can have a piggy banks for ‘expenses’.
I am confused. People are mad at the faculty because they were paid during the strike and still wont give lessons, but were they paid their usual rate?
I’m assuming the faculty is probably asking to be paid the new wage they are trying to negotiate since the strike was about how Mannes faculty make less than faculty from other divisions.
I might be wrong about this but this is a messy situation and I hope things are resolved soon for the students’ sake.
The Mannes College faculty are the highest paid in the entire university and the raises in the contract were retroactive and they got over $2000 extra if they taught during the COVID lockdown years. AND, they won’t make up the classes they got paid for but didn’t teach unless they get paid twice. These are facts that everyone knows, but the union tried to keep quiet.
The university paid the faculty but they didn’t teach the students. The students want to know when they will get what they paid for, but the faculty won’t do it, lamely saying that it wasn’t negotiated in the contract. Were these people paid or not? If they were, which is what everyone here seems to be saying, then each one of those faculty members owes those students classes. How is that school supposed to afford to pay faculty twice, so the students can get what they paid for. This is pretty pathetic. It is odd though, as everything I had heard about this until now, was that the faculty hadn’t been paid and that the school was union busting, paying poverty wages, etc., and now I read about the school paying the teachers while they did nothing. That doesn’t sound like any sort of union busting I have ever heard of.
The bond between student and professor is rather personal by design. What an easy way to sour that. Clearly the faculty are none too worried about the consequences.
Mannes: Study in NYC with the teachers who didn’t accept you at Juilliard or Manhattan School.
I went to both Juilliard and MSM, and believe me, they’re not in the same league.
Your comment is ambiguous. Do you mean that MSM is not in the same league as Juilliard, or that Mannes is not in the same league as Juilliard and MSM?
No comparison between MSM and Juilliard has been made. Rather, Mannes‘ faculty overlaps these two other schools’. In the American system, serious students typically consider (in this order):
1) Teacher
2) Institution
3) Location
Mannes can fulfill #1 and #3 with ease. My niece says that some students use Mannes as a stepping stone to other schools and programs.
Likewise:
“I’m getting my Masters at Mannes” is a statement more likely to be made by a good student from a state university than by one at Juilliard, although it does happen.
Is it true that Orion was ousted for JACK Quartet?
Yup, The Orion Quartet was fired and replaced by The JACK Quartet. And the string faculty were not consulted, at all. Its true, the Orion’s did do much at Mannes except a concert now and then and the Jack’s have created a real program, including a graduate string quartet in residence, but really, who wants to listen to contemporary music played by a string quartet.
Mannes is not a freestanding conservatory anymore. Part of the additional appeal is having access to the top art and design school in North America, where students work with fashion designers, take media minors, do the operas together with Parsons. As a Mannes student, I can do something like 70 or more minors and there are some really special things going on with performing arts and design students.
Faculty are paid for their time. Organizing a strike, picketing and all other matters concerning a strike takes time…
That’s dishonest. The faculty were paid to teach a class, not for their time. They were paid with money from the students, some who go into debt. They were not paid to go on strike. The college paid the faculty to teach. Your comment just proves how unethical many of the faculty and the union are.
So let me get this straight? The students should take out loans to pay for the teachers to go on strike? And the students should be intimidated and coerced by the same faculty to not attend any classes, respond to emails from school, not give recitals or performances, and not play their juries? Is that right? So, the strike comes out of the hides of the students. Shame on you Been There. You and the others who take this position have exploited these students and shifted the blame to the college which paid you and paid you quite well.
The faculty recieved strike pay AND their regular pay.
Students do not pay hard-earned tuition for a teacher’s out-of-studio activities, regardless of the nature of those activities. The relationship is basically transactional. Anything less is theft.
Just like a prostitute. To avoid legal problems, most escort ads state that any payment is for time only without any promise of sexual contact.
A whore by any other name…
What has been concealed by an individual referred to as DAVID T. LITTLE, PhD is that all of the faculty received full compensation while striking. This information has been intentionally withheld from the public by both the faculty union and the aforementioned professor. It is time for individuals outside of the situation to take action and question the situation at hand.
It is uncommon for individuals to receive pay while on strike. Despite this, those involved in this particular circumstance, many of whom earn upwards of $150 per hour (with some earning over $400 per hour), are attempting to paint a negative picture of Mannes by claiming unjust and exploitative practices. To be paid while on strike and refuse to make up any missed lessons is incredibly disappointing and unacceptable.
What we have here is a performing arts school, run by a bunch of non-performing hacks.
And not one plays viola.
This is the woke state, social justice run amok and distorted. Mannes, which was once a bastion of traditional classical music, was forced by its parent University to merge with a third rate jazz program. Mannes, which was the birthplace of Schenkerian theory, did traditional operas, and had great classical music ensembles in residence, now has the JACK Quartet after firing the Orion String Quartet, plays works by people like Julius Eastman and Philip Glass instead of Strauss, associates heavily with people like John Zorn who are pop music composers, reduces its theory and ear training to teach things like music technology and entrepreneurship, and tomorrow night, as a perfect example, has its orchestra playing works by composers like Higdon and Hailstork, instead of Beethoven and Mozart. So, does anyone wonder why you end up with a faculty that goes on strike, gets paid during the strike, gets something like $100 million in additional pay over the next five years, and won’t make up lessons for their students.
“Not obligated…” It’s sad to see a great composer like David T. Little be nothing but a mouthpiece for the United Auto Workers, which had two recent union presidents in a row go to federal prison for things like embezzlement. You and your ilk, Mr. Little, may not be “obligated” according to the union, to provide the lessons and classes you were paid for but did not provide, but you are obligated by any sense of decency and respect to the students whose money went into your pockets. Have you no sense of decency, sir?
As someone connected to Mannes for many years, it has recently become clear that The New School has been squeezing the place dry. (They are doing that to Parsons School of Design as well.)They instituted giant cuts to the Mannes staff, leaving no assistants for any of the administrators including the deans and full time faculty, and not enough people to run the place appropriately, they have no fundraising staff right now and have in some cases gone years without any fundraising staff. The New School doesn’t promote or market Mannes, including having any printed material for Mannes, while the central administration of The New School has grown and grown, and the president of The New School earns well over a million dollars. The fact is that the administrators of Mannes, against all odds, keep it going at a pretty good level. That’s the story that hasn’t been told.
Still, the students and their parents who foot the bill are the ones who got screwed and thats on the Mannes faculty and administration. Maybe not quite as heroic as you seem to say.
Faculty members were paid in full, as was made clear from the faculty member’s comment below. Faculty should either make up the classes and lessons, or reimburse the students. It was not the students who were out on strike.
I am a member of the part-time faculty union at Mannes and The New School. Yes, we got paid and didn’t teach our classes. That’s because we were on strike. And that’s how a strike works. Striking workers get paid because we have to spend time planning the strike. This university, like all of higher ed has taken advantage of people for many years. The part-time faculty has no real job security. If there are fewer students, we have to suffer by not having classes to teach. We should have job security whether there are enough students or not. We should also not have to pay for health insurance or have to pay more when the cost of it goes up. If that means the administrators have to be fired, that’s too bad. They all make too much anyway. And yes, Mannes and The New School are fairly unique when it comes to unions like this, but we’re coming for Juilliard, MSM, NEC, Curtis, and the rest. Be prepared for more like what happened to The New School. Just like we closed The New School down, we’re going to do this at all the other conservatories and art schools. It’s time for part-time faculty to have real job security no matter what.
According to the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act, it is not normal for employers to compensate workers who are on strike. In fact it is very unusual. Despite this, it appears that Mannes provided full compensation to its faculty on top of the strike pay that was no doubt being provided by the union.
Some of the demands being made, such as guaranteed payment even in the absence of students and complete coverage for health insurance, are unreasonable and do not reflect the realities of the outside world beyond the academic setting.
It is difficult to determine whether these statements are the result of a lack of knowledge or a deliberate attempt to deceive.
Welcome to the real world.
However, the real world fulfills commitments to those who pay for services, like students who no doubt will carry their student debt well into their careers, in music or otherwise.
In your quest for better pay, you have made helpless and trusting students the victims. Without them, there would be no New School, no Mannes, no nothin’. Remember that.
I hope you and your colleagues can sleep at night.
If you’re worried about your job prospects, why don’t you just transition into an industry that society deems valuable enough to warrant the compensation you feel you deserve.
“Learn to code”
– Joe Biden
If, indeed, the faculty received both strike pay AND regular pay, then it was a big strategic mistake on their part to accept both. Now the administration is able to use that to their advantage.
Good luck with that. The New School administration is afraid of the faculty, most of which voted no confidence against the University prez, provost, and head of New School administration.
So sanctimonious music teachers screwed over sanctimonious music students? After working among you people for the last 20 year’s, I’m not the least bit surprised by any of this.