Academic Productivity

8 Responses to “Academics salaries lower than automobile industry worker salary?”

1. Robin Blanton Says:
   July 14th, 2007 at 9:22 pm

   I’ve been enjoying reading your posts for some time and I want to thank you for a great site.

   However, I don’t agree with your thinking here. Why must head work be more valuable than hand work? As someone who’s worked both on a shop floor and in academia, what I find more insulting is the assumption, unfortunately all too common, that academics, who, it can’t be denied, have some of the cushiest jobs ever invented, deserve more money than people who work hard with their bodies at jobs that may require just as much know-how and are likely physically exhausting and unpleasant to boot.

2. Max Leibman Says:
   July 14th, 2007 at 9:55 pm

   At the risk of getting both academia and labor furious with me, I would suggest that where things went this wrong is in negotiations–either the UAW has managed to secure compensation out of place with their position in the market, or academics and any unions representing has failed to secure compensation in line with market demands.

   Another possibility to consider is that there are many topics in academia that the public doesn’t want nearly so badly as it wants transportation. I’m quite certain there is a glut of people who want to spend their life studying and teaching about French literature relative to the actual demand for their scholarship (and, frankly, in some such cases, I don’t think the public is wrong). Also, there’s the problem of creating an incentive to do the labor–I’ve met people whose dream job is to be a professor of psychology, or literature, or mathematics; I have never met anybody who even claimed to know somebody whose dream job is to work in a factory for the next forty years.

3. CAW Says:
   July 14th, 2007 at 9:59 pm

   I’m a Union member with a degree, close to two actually. My marks were good enough to look at a scholarship and I am fairly confident of my academic ability to consider a professional career. What I did not have was working time left to reach my financial goals/obligations.

   What these kinds of stats always leave out is the salary ramp. An autoworker’s wage starts pretty well, and stays there with a very slow ramp. An academics salary starts pretty low but can rise very high depending on publishing, etc. So, while my wage was higher than my professor brother’s for, I think five year, I think he matched me on the seventh year. Now, he is so for ahead of me, I’m quite proud of him. He has easily recovered the money he “lost” below reference line and has accelerated far above. His academic life did not require much movement, nor did my uncle’s. I know others have mobility but, if they are publishing, they move up. My brother and uncle both have tenure which beats any kind of security my Union can negotiate.

   You can think of it as an apprenticeship program. They always have a lower rate as they go through the terms of probation to a skill trade. The difference is that in a Union setting, the wage ceiling is defined. In Academia the sky is the limit.
   So, academically, when we talk about salaries we must define our terms. We really are talking about apples and oranges.

4. r Says:
   July 15th, 2007 at 5:22 pm

   In addition to the above suggestions, I would add that there’s some play of the “anything you might want to do already you’ll be paid less for” phenomenon. Basically, people pay whatever they have to to get enough good enough people to do the job they want done. In this case, it turns out that’s a mid-range not high-range salary - in part because there are enough people who “love” their work that they’re willing to do it for less than they might require to be convinced to do, um, banking instead.

   This takes a bit of a hit on academicians, but it’s nothing like what happens in some fields - eg, painting, or social work. A postdoc salary may be low, but it can be higher than a mid-level social worker salary already. And in my experience, even more social workers and painters will tell you that they do their work because they have to than will academicians.

   I’d also note that there’s more flexibility in all of these “lower” wage jobs than in a factory job - and again, people are willing to pay a premium (take a cut in salary) in order to have such flexibility - which is also totally rational.

5. AB Says:
   September 29th, 2007 at 6:54 pm

   Hmm…My first reaction is that the 93k for a full professor - assistant
   professor salaries are 30-40k below that. Secondly, unless one is a
   field like genetics, or at a private university, there is little ramp as
   suggested by CAW. For example, unless I get a competing offer from
   another university, I can expect an annual increase of 3% or so, plus
   increases of 4-5k when/if one gets promoted to associate and then
   full professor. Once one has reached full professor, there are no more
   promotions (unless one moves into university administration) and
   so ones salary does not increase by leaps and bounds.

   I would dearly love to know what university CAWs brother is at, and
   what field he is in. As an assistant professor in the sciences, my salary is significantly below any of those list above - if I were in
   humanities, it would be lower still. I work at a good research level 1
   university. Fortunately, the cost of living here is low, so I can do
   alright.

   I have also never of a university giving pay raises based on the number
   of publications one gets. If you have a good year, get a grant and
   get several papers out, your annual increase may be 4% instead of 3%,
   but it does not increase by leaps and bounds.

6. temp Says:
   October 4th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

   Thanks AB, that’s a great added detail to the stats. If the incentives for publising are just 1%, then it’s almost like punishing people with a good track record. There are papers in the decision making literature that show that giving low incentives, or too small punishments, work the other way around!

   I wouldn’t be surprised finding that people under Unis with the 1% incentive end up publising less.

7. Corey Says:
   June 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 am

   Wow. It goes to show what training in a good trade will get you. Sometimes speending all that time in school is not as lucrative as you think.

8. Socrates Says:
   June 21st, 2008 at 7:27 am

   It’s not WRONG that UAW workers get more than academics, It’s facts. A graduate will only think about him or herself and will negotiate on an individual basis. He or she will work harder or cheaper than their peers to gain a competitive edge. A UAW worker stands together with other UAW workers and negotiates as a united front. You think that’s unfair? Don’t blame the UAW for being better negotiators

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