4 ms·
These high salaries -- medical/law/architecture/business/etc are the same way -- are required in order to lure the superstars into academia and away from privat
by eitally 16y ago
These high salaries -- medical/law/architecture/business/etc are the same way -- are required in order to lure the superstars into academia and away from private practice. The highest paid professors at my public university were paid $500k+, with the top handful being at $1m +/-$100k.
- _delirium 16y agoThat's definitely the reason, but I'm not sure it's always worth it. The fact that someone can earn $1m in the private sector doesn't automatically mean that they'll provide $1m worth of value to any university that hires them; the skills aren't identical. Might be less true in areas where being prominent is a ticket to bringing in a ton of grant money; some famous medical researchers essentially pay their own salary out of grants, in which case from the university's perspective they're free.