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[merce]

Not a Chron article.


A report on the Texas A&M spreadsheet and its reception. The comments below the article are a bit disheartening- at least the few I read.

[merce]

Ok, the article is a bit of a snore, but I do like this line:

"Money gets dropped out of airplanes over our campuses, ... -- and there's no accountability"

[fiona]

Didn't we have a discussion of this a few months ago?

It seems like deja vu all over again, but who knows?

The Fiona

[gsawpenny]

Ok, the article is a bit of a snore, but I do like this line:

"Money gets dropped out of airplanes over our campuses, ... -- and there's no accountability"

I have been desperately signaling the money airplane but it has yet to fly over my campus.

[canuckois]

It depends who you ask.  From the perspective of a culture that prizes neither intellectualism nor education in general, obviously we're paid too much.

From where I'm standing....no.  We're not.

[larryc]

I am scarcely paid at all.

[merit_decrease]

I hope this is paper money.

[fizmath]

Rank professions in order of the average age at which you can first afford a home.  I suspect college professors would be at the end of the list.

[al_wallace]

I really agree that college professors are overpaid just like daycare workers, high school teachers, social workers, and nursing home staff. You know who else is grossly overcompensated? Baby seals. Greedy baby seals are constantly demanding that they keep their rich and luxurious fur even while sitting on rolls of fat. Clearly their enormous stores of blubber point to excesses of the seal pup lifestyle. They continue to liberally suckle on their mother's teat while contributing nothing to society. Their socialist welfare-state agenda has nearly destroyed the job-creating, economically productive seal skin industry. The seal skin purveyor merely wishes to borrow one of the redundant thermoregulatory methods of these pups for the greater good--producing useful products for society while these sausage-shaped fat cats lounge about and whine. How many club manufacturers, blood-stain remover corporations, or seal fur lobbyist groups will be brought to the brink of extinction before we see the folly of these selfish pups? These seal pups will bleed our country dry if we let them!

This message was sponsored by the friends of conservative seal pups foundation.

[systeme_d_]

Somebody has already HoF'd that post, Al_wallace, but if they hadn't, I would have done it myself.

[retrenchment]

Wow! I didn't know you could get a tax deduction for giving to charity!
http://giveitbackforjobs.org/

[fiona]

I WANT MORE MONEY. I WANT IT NOW.

The Fiona

[geonerd]

Are football coaches in the Texas A&M spreadsheet? Probably not.

[normative_]

The spreadsheet approach is increasingly common, to the detriment of the humanities most of all, which is a shame. You can't put a price on civilisation.

However...what these studies never account for is (opportunity) costs. If you took two 18-year-olds, put one in a job and another in 10 years of university, you get a whopping differential that has to be made up with higher salaries.

For the casual reader on the fora, at High School Plus 10:

HS Grad, starting at 25k per year over 10 years= +250,000 earned
Professor, who had to pay 40k per year to study= -400,000 in debt.
Living costs cancel each other out.

So, High School plus 10 means the prof is 650,000 dollars behind. Since those are very conservative earnings for the HS Grad, the gap may be even bigger.

Then add interest on that debt, and the lack of equity in real estate that has to be made up, usually with a larger mortage that has to be serviced. Either you fvck a Rockefeller, or you need a higher salary, and even that isn't usually enough.

Hmm...maybe I should  save this post for my aspiring grad students...

[polly_mer]

The spreadsheet approach is increasingly common, to the detriment of the humanities most of all, which is a shame. You can't put a price on civilisation.

However...what these studies never account for is (opportunity) costs. If you took two 18-year-olds, put one in a job and another in 10 years of university, you get a whopping differential that has to be made up with higher salaries.

For the casual reader on the fora, at High School Plus 10:

HS Grad, starting at 25k per year over 10 years= +250,000 earned
Professor, who had to pay 40k per year to study= -400,000 in debt.
Living costs cancel each other out.

So, High School plus 10 means the prof is 650,000 dollars behind. Since those are very conservative earnings for the HS Grad, the gap may be even bigger.

This may be true in some fields, but isn't true in others. 

What my field looks like is
BS grad, starting at $50K per year for six years=$300,000 earned
Assistant professor, spent four years in grad school at $25K and then two years as a post-doc at $60K=$220,000 earned and then makes that same $50-$60K for a few years

The opportunity cost is there, but it's not insane like the humanities people who paid for their own school at private school rates.  Who does that?  Scholarships, people, scholarships.

My family and high school colleagues do sometimes ding me for my cushy lifestyle.  Compared to them, I do have a cushy lifestyle with flexible hours, higher pay, and more fun doing it.