Grumpy said:
Professors get paid fairly well. However, we go to school often as long as a brain surgeon to get our degrees, then have to compete with 80 to 120 other applicants for a job, then work our tails off to get tenure, then full professor. And teaching is only a fraction of our job, since R1 institutions require enormous output of research. Most wish we only worked 40-hour work weeks.
If you are looking for over-inflated salaries at the university, I wouldn't start with faculty. Faculty are essential employees. But all the staff and administration are not. Just a couple years ago, Yale University hit a stat that demonstrates the glut: they now have more administrators than undergraduate students. Schools like Baylor are not at that level, but it increases each year. Way too much superfluous staff and stupid administrative jobs. Admin in Baylor are paid extremely well, get the best health care packages, the nicest offices, and some are never in their offices, while others work very hard. Evaluation is needed here first in order to make cuts to save on budgets.
Lol. Yeah ok
Everyone in the job market competes with AT LEAST 80-120 other applicants for a job. Many jobs often more.
The length of school doesn't matter. There are plenty of people that go to school for a long time.
I included the research in my post.
But sorry teaching 6 hours a week with maybe 6 more hours of office hours and the rest doing "research" is a joke. That is not 40 hours of work. And we all know those profs that used their same set of notes to teach from that they used 10, 15, 30 years ago. Meaning they have basically no prep time needed.
Because I am sorry but in the vast majority of degree fields there is no true research to be done.
Or we could go into how much of the research is being done by people who went straight through and got their PHD in a field they have never worked a day in. They teach all about business but have never worked in business. They teach all about education but have never worked a day in a public school. Accounting, sciences, etc.
Then their research is all perfect world, sunshine and roses but is not actual application.
Tenure..... what a joke. What other career field (without unions) gives workers basically a contract preventing them from being replaced, basically unless they commit crimes, regardless of job performance?
So sure administration (like every other field) is bloated and needs to be gutted but the professors could actually work as well. Like truly work.
But we could also get into about a dozen other white collar jobs that are very similar. Where they people are in the office for 40 hours a week/logged on at home working remote but probably only do 30 hours (or less) of actual work because the rest is wasted time but then they/their company charge big rates for services to pay them big salaries even though they aren't working. I just focused on profs here because this thread is about universities.
