So the take-away is that american schools value their teachers less than restaurants their dish-washers. That's a great lesson about the state of academia.
The lady worked part time, granted. However, I would expect a high-skilled job such as teaching to pay enough for a living even on part time - 3,500 USD for a whole course seems a bit on the cheap side for me.
Then, there's a couple of other factors that come into play: The university only hands out part time contracts, so they're in a position to keep the wages low: Demand too much, no problem, we'll take another teacher for your course next year. I dispute your notion that academia in general pays enough. The given university pays an average of 20 - 25k to 75% of it's teachers. That's about half of the average wage in the USA. Even if they're working part-time that's still way too low for a job that requires university grade education. That's the people you entrust your childrens education to, not your dishwasher.
I assume that most of those 75% would love to have a full time job at the faculty, but the faculty obviously doesn't let them. So they either have a second/third job or live on scraps. Neither of those options is even remotely beneficial to the students education.
> That's not true. The lady worked part time. Most dish washers work full or longer time work shifts.
This is not true at all for dish washers and retail workers. The trend over time has been to schedule those workers at the maximum possible amount without them qualifying as a full time employee, which may entitle them to some kinds of benefits.
