There's a stupid amount of variation in academic compensation. I think a lot of it comes down to people early in the pipe having ludicrously low expectations, a

There's a stupid amount of variation in academic compensation. I think a lot of it comes down to people early in the pipe having ludicrously low expectations, after many years of PhD stipends turning into a kinda laughable postdoc salary. People coming back from industry (eg, to business schools) know better how to negotiate and have higher expectations. But might have a harder time getting in the door from industry in STEM areas, because it's still pretty easy to get cheap kids from the postdoc pipeline. Here's the transparent california list of UC salaries: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2016/university-of-california https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2016/university-o... The highest salaries are for surgeon profs, which, ok, sure, why not? Here's 50 prof's in the PROF-AY job with total comp >$450K; lots of them in econ, based on some light perusal. The very-tenured math profs I worked with seem to be in the range of ~$150K total comp, by comparison. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=PROF-AY-B/E/E&y=2016 https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=PROF-AY...