Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2009-10. Notice that competition is so fierce for business professors that salaries for new assistant professors with no experience ($95,822) are about $10,000 higher than existing assistant professors ($85,996).
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
16 Comments:
That sort of incongruity can't persist, can it?
It's certainly bad for morale.
Is this just for b-school professors?
I would presume that economics professors in the econ department (Assuming they're separate from the social science category) would make a similar salary, but in the absence of data I am unsure.
After all, the econ and finance professors in the b-school and econ department both pretty much get Ph.D.'s from economics departments.
And, as a sidenote, what is the difference between an econ professor at a 4-year university's business school versus an econ professor in their economics department?
Anyhow, I'm also pretty surprised that math and statistics professors score much lower. Maybe I place more emphasis on this stuff than most, but it just seems really low.
Have you got any additional data regarding, say, standard deviation, and the difference between public and private 4-year schools, and other stuff?
Great Post, thanks!
--Daigle
That sort of incongruity is called "salary compression" and it happens all the time. It's been happening for decades.
It does hurt morale but the fact is that the newest professors are often far more skilled than the dead wood professors they are joining. Associate professors are often more productive and they complain more vociferously, but even if the Assistant Professor makes less than a full professor, the gap was attained through decades of work - not exactly "fair".
Job changers get higher salary increases than people who set down roots. That's true in lots of professions.
New Statistics professors might not get the higher salary offers a Marketing professor might receive. Statistics is somewhat "static", with basic concepts, whereas Marketing is changing rapidly with new channels such as Twitter. Also Marketing involves communicating with new cultures more rapidly now.
It makes sense that Arts & Sciences profs would make less. Those colleges in the university system seem to be the ones most subject to the "life of the mind" concept that encourages a glut of supply in PHDs.
Ref: http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Want-to-Go-to-Grad/45239/
I wonder if tenured full-time faculty are pricing themselves out of the labor market. Is the market competetion between professors at other universities or part-time instructors at the same university? Do two $48,000 instructors = one $96,000 full-time professor?
I deeply appreciate the caliber of university instruction I received, but I am not sure the people who control the $$$ will in the future.
One reason for the competition in business is that the professors can make even more in the private sector.
More government overcompensation in my opinion. Would they get paid this much if government weren't paying for it? No wonder university is so expensive these days.
Is "Library" REALLY a science?
Since the legal field has the same high salaries, it suggests that one has to pay that much to get people away from private industry.
Since the legal field has the same high salaries
Law is a government-supported monopoly. Income in that field is much higher than it would be in a free market.
Law professorships are similarly not a free market, and the employer isn't paying with its own money, so it's not surprising law professors get paid so much.
The difference between new and existing is even more than stated since the Assistant Professor salary calculations include the new Assistant Professors as well (see the footnote).
I wonder why so much money is WASTED on 'area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies'?
What is and where is the pracitical value of such questionable studies?
Federal government?
Politically correct state, county, and city governments?
Tim Cavanaugh over at reason in his Kollege Kockup: Something Is Not Right In Higher Ed notes: "As the U.S. economy's other vital systems continue to shut down, the college diploma system still seems to be going strong. But a closer look indicates that higher ed may be heading into its final series of convulsions.
Student loan defaults are up. Graduate performance in the job market is down. Bankrupt states are unable to keep public university employees in the style to which they've grown accustomed. Harvard's endowment got wiped out by future White House economic advisor Larry Summers"...
This is just a reflection of the job market in the respective fields. PhDs in business have marketable skills.
The lower paying fields like communications, English, and performing arts don't have many other options. Interesting that those fields seem to rely more on natural ability.
Also it should be pointed out that this is not necessarily government overcompensation. Many college professors work for private institutions and I would bet that Ivy league schools pay more than Michigan, Stanford, UCLA, and other top public schools.
"This is just a reflection of the job market in the respective fields"...
It can't be, can it?
I mean what drives the higher cost of politically correct crapola like 'ethnic, cultural, and gender studies' versus something actually useful like agricultural and biological and biomedical sciences?
When I said its a reflection of the job market, I was assuming that there are few PhDs in useless fields. I imagine that it is hard to find professors to fill these positions.
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