Margaret Mary Vojtko “was not even clearing $25,000 a year … Compare this to the salary of Duquesne’s president, who makes more than $700,000 with full benefits.”
A year's tuition at Duquesne University, a private college, may carry a $31,385 price tag, but a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column claims that 25 years of teaching at the college left Margaret Mary Vojtko too poor to survive. She taught French at Duquesne as an adjunct for $3,500 per class without benefits. Her class schedule was reduced to 10 hours a week as she faced enormous cancer treatment bills.
Daniel Kovalik, a senior associate general counsel of the United Steelworkers union, and a legal adviser to Vojtko, wrote:
As amazing as it sounds, Margaret Mary, a 25-year professor, was not making ends meet. Even during the best of times, when she was teaching three classes a semester and two during the summer, she was not even clearing $25,000 a year, and she received absolutely no health care benefits. Compare this to the salary of Duquesne's president, who makes more than $700,000 with full benefits.
After a long battle with ovarian cancer, friends and colleages said, Vojtko couldn't afford to fix a broken furnace at home. She spent nights working at an Eat n' Park restaurant and slept at her office until campus security escorted her out, they said.
On Sept. 1, Vojtko died of a heart attack. She was 83.
