Uncompensated Holiday Unemployment

Here's a quote NPR's Marketplace last week in a story about academic sabbatical:

From the outside, the professor-ly life might seem pretty cushy. Summers off, the job security of tenure, a paid leave every six years or so to do research.

And here's a letter written in response:

Michael Harris wrote from Fairbanks, Ala., and his post at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to challenge the notion of professors getting summers off. Academics are on nine-month contracts, Professor Harris writes. "This is not actually time off, but rather annual uncompensated unemployment with the obligation to return to their faculty positions in the following term."

With today and tomorrow canceled for snow, I guess my forced leave begins early. Oh the challenges of educating the youth of America.