7 ms·

These sorts of "highest salary wins" rules should typically be crafted in an industry/sector-specific way. So schools have to compete with each other on salary

These sorts of "highest salary wins" rules should typically be crafted in an industry/sector-specific way. So schools have to compete with each other on salary but not with tech/finance/med. And then there are caps by sector. The problem with this approach, of course, is that you need a judge/executive who follows the spirit of the law so that I can't get a bunch of cheap tech workers by saying "oh, job ABC in town XYZ is its own industry/sector and not comparable to SWEs at Google".

geebee 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this. I work for a university, and I am stunned with how talented and accomplished many post-docs are considering the level of low pay and career uncertainty they continue to face. The RAND institute, among others, concluded that the reason US citizens have turned away from graduate degrees in the sciences is a rational market response to poor pay and working conditions in favor of fields that offer better salaries and career stability. In short, there is no shortage, just a desire to pay extremely low salaries and establish exploitive working conditions - which you can do when you control someone's right to live and work in the US when these rights are difficult to come by. Not only do I think that there's no reason to prop up a system that suppresses salaries outside tech/finance/med (or within those fields, that happens too, especially in tech), I think there's real harm in the market distortions these schemes produce.
- klipt 8y ago
  There's always a trade-off. You can have cheap steel, or well paid steel workers. You can have cheap medical care, or well paid doctors. Arguably by making postdocs underpaid, the US as a nation is getting cheap scientific advancement, in exchange for dangling the promise of eventual American citizenship (and the American dream) in front of said postdocs.
Retric 8y ago
I don't think that's worth the overhead. If you end up only importing medical professionals then that's going to help the US economy quite a bit more than importing 'highly skilled' bank tellers. Money is a very good proxy for demand after all. If company's can easily place people for 350+k jobs that's going to lower the pay of those 350k jobs. PS: Effectively, your describing a planned economy where someone picks the level of expected pay for each job with more foreign workers available for overpaid jobs.

geebee 8y ago

I'm not sure I agree with this. I work for a university, and I am stunned with how talented and accomplished many post-docs are considering the level of low pay and career uncertainty they continue to face. The RAND institute, among others, concluded that the reason US citizens have turned away from graduate degrees in the sciences is a rational market response to poor pay and working conditions in favor of fields that offer better salaries and career stability. In short, there is no shortage, just a desire to pay extremely low salaries and establish exploitive working conditions - which you can do when you control someone's right to live and work in the US when these rights are difficult to come by. Not only do I think that there's no reason to prop up a system that suppresses salaries outside tech/finance/med (or within those fields, that happens too, especially in tech), I think there's real harm in the market distortions these schemes produce.

klipt 8y ago
There's always a trade-off. You can have cheap steel, or well paid steel workers. You can have cheap medical care, or well paid doctors. Arguably by making postdocs underpaid, the US as a nation is getting cheap scientific advancement, in exchange for dangling the promise of eventual American citizenship (and the American dream) in front of said postdocs.

Retric 8y ago

I don't think that's worth the overhead. If you end up only importing medical professionals then that's going to help the US economy quite a bit more than importing 'highly skilled' bank tellers. Money is a very good proxy for demand after all. If company's can easily place people for 350+k jobs that's going to lower the pay of those 350k jobs. PS: Effectively, your describing a planned economy where someone picks the level of expected pay for each job with more foreign workers available for overpaid jobs.