7 ms·
Pay the professor more money. Top Universities are sitting on tens of billions of dollars of endowments, and are willing to pay football and basketball coaches
by arcanus 7y ago
Pay the professor more money. Top Universities are sitting on tens of billions of dollars of endowments, and are willing to pay football and basketball coaches millions of dollars. They are not insulated from market pricing.
In many cases, a new assistant professor's salary at a top university is lower than than entry level salaries for software engineers in technology. For considerably higher stress, harder work conditions, and less job security until they make tenure.
Compare this with medical doctors at teaching med schools: they are often paid slightly less or competitive with practicing doctors.
I am a research scientist with a PhD, and while academia has perks, I'm very happy I went to industry.
- Barrin92 7y agogetting university professors into an arms race with the salaries of the private markets would entirely shift the character of public education. If universities had to play by the cutthroat logic of the market as a consequence research or teaching that is not profit oriented would have to die out, or tuitions rise to levels that put immense pressure on individuals and the public purse. This is a dystopian scenario where academic freedom, basic research, and the non-commercial nature of research is completely lost. This is not something we should be going for, instead we should appeal to highly trained researchers to maybe think about the public good that is at stake here. People like Bengio show that it is possible. A future where essential AI research is commodified is a nightmare scenario.
- nostrebored 7y agoHow is this a nightmare scenario? Why is teaching being profit oriented a bad thing? There is no necessary loss of academic freedom. Paying a competitive salary doesn't make research commercial -- the university is trying to retain researchers not turn a profit on the research.
- mkl 7y ago> the university is trying to retain researchers not turn a profit on the research. Depends on the university. Most claim ownership of researchers' inventions and have ambitions of profiting from them (many stumble at the commercialisation/monetisation step). For example, Stanford has reportedly made hundreds of millions off Google's PageRank algorithm, because Stanford owned the patent, not Larry Page. That's a good incentive not to work as a university researcher.
- creato 7y agoI think Larry Page did okay in the end. It's not like Stanford takes hundreds of millions from every rinky dink idea thought up by it's students. Another way to look at it is researchers are getting somewhat angelic investments from schools.
- ldoughty 7y agoThe money to pay people comes from loans, which are thousands of people hoping they make more money in the future to pay salaries today. If salaries were higher, tuition would be even more difficult and raise the loans even more. Really universities need to find ways to capitalize on their knowledge base to help pay salaries. They also need to reduce overhead... Many schools have several disjoined IT and sometimes HR departments.
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoOr we could cut out a few University Vice Provosts of Telling Professors to be Game-Changers who make $400k/year.
- Hello71 7y agothis is a straw man, no better than the argument that the NCAA and other sports organizations use to excuse paying so-called "amateur players" absolutely nothing, for, and I quote, "considerably higher stress, harder work conditions, and less job security until they [go pro]". parent never argued that professors need to be paid as much as private, merely that the salaries need to be comparable rather than several times lower.
- scarejunba 7y agoThey're in that race already because private enterprise exists. Either they lose or they adapt. Losing is having advanced research and tech be siloed inside massive corporations. Adapting is out-competing the massive corporations for the best, then being able to capitalize on the research.
- acbart 7y agoYes, this exactly. I'm an assistant professor who's fine with my salary and position, but I can see firsthand how difficult it is to recruit and retain excellent colleagues.
- mabbo 7y agoBut why would the university bother? The students are paying to go to <top name school>, not (very often) because they want to be taught by <top name professor>. From the university's perspective, there's little financial incentive to retain that top talent. Making it worse, the professor isn't being stolen by a competitor (another university) where students might spend their money instead. In short, if you're asking for the free market to solve this problem, it has- from the professors' perspective. Edit: put another way, these professors can earn the private industry far more money than they can the university. Often a lot more. Salary competition between such pairs of actors will always result in the same thing.
- bradleyjg 7y agoIf universities are profit maximizing entities why do they get preferential tax treatment?
- ldoughty 7y agoPaying employees more is not profit-centric... I'm not sure about your argument here .. University athletics is certainly a profit center, but research and general operations is devoid of cash, even at R1 institutions. I struggle to find money for salary and most private industries will offer 20% more for any employee I hire
- bradleyjg 7y agoQuoting the grandparent post: The students are paying to go to <top name school>, not (very often) because they want to be taught by <top name professor>. From the university's perspective, there's little financial incentive to retain that top talent. If that’s how a university makes decisions then I don’t think it ought to get tax advantages.
- throwawayjava 7y agoThe top schools aren't the ones who need to worry, and it's not the famous professors who need to be retained. It's the mid and low ranked schools who are facing competitive pressures from alternative options.
- mattmcknight 7y agoThe trouble is that the market rate for professors in other subjects is not as high, and they get mad if the differential is too great.
- ryan93 7y agoIs there evidence for this?
- MegaButts 7y agoYou should look up salaries for professors/lecturers that teach business, law, and medicine. They pay a lot more than salaries for professors/lecturers for history, math, and literature.
- throwawayjava 7y agoMed is different for a lot of reasons. But, yeah, the delta between econ/law and CS faculty salaries is why I turned down TT offers and went to industry. They can pay. They're choosing not to.
- wolfgke 7y agoJust a consideration: Do these differences in salaries for professors of the different subjects also show up in tuition fees for students of the respective subject?
- mattmcknight 7y agoYes. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/06/01/why-universities-charge-extra-for-engineering-business-and-nursing-degrees https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
- throwawayjava 7y agoNot at the types of institutions I would be working at (or most institutions, for that matter).
- liability 7y agoConsider the plight of the medical student though. Worse than that of a CS grad student, that's for sure. Made to practice medicine on people while sleep deprived as a form of industry-approved hazing, a practice that doubtlessly has a substantial death toll associated with it.
- munherty 7y agoNever understood why this doesnt get any press. Its absurd
- blueboo 7y agoGets lots of press. Google doctor interns lack of sleep for a litany of deeply-researched news articles. Hospitals are being privatised and private universities dominate medical education. Where’s the political pressure point?
- throwaway1777 7y agoIt gets press but only so many ways to report the same story for years on end.
- sandworm101 7y agoIt gets press, but it also a legitimate training technique in many fields. There is something to be said for living and breathing nothing but your job for a period of time. Stress and the ability to perform despite stress is also something that must be learned through experience. Doctors, attorneys, the entire military ... the juniors are run through a few years of long hours and horrible conditions. The downsides have to be weighed against the training value.
- watwut 7y agoThe military is trying to mold you the same to make you replaceable and obeisant. Doctors don't need to be all the same.
- 7y ago
- mehrdada 7y agoWhile we are at it, pay the grad student more as well. Otherwise, don't be surprised that your good students end up all being foreign-born, motivated by immigration benefits, and local ones would [often wisely] be totally disinterested in the grind.
- ldoughty 7y agoIt shocked me when Republicans wanted to tax grad students... Seriously, 18-25k take home pay is poverty level
- banachtarski 7y agoCan't agree more. I was initially interested in academia and went pretty far down the graduate track but ultimately felt like the academic world just hangs professors out to dry when it comes to compensation (tenure is a poor substitute).
- um_ya 7y agoTo be fair, football and basketball coaches bring in more money to the school. Paying a teacher more doesn't necessarily equate to more money in the school's pocket.
- smt88 7y agoFootball and basketball coaches likely help the school lose money. Almost zero US college sports programs are profitable[1]. Also, since when does a university have to justify its teaching quality by its profitability? That's the reason the school exists and why it has non-profit status... 1. http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athletics-departments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/athlet...
- joshuamorton 7y ago*directly. Sports programs help with recruiting and alumni fundraising. Both of which are profit centers.
- smt88 7y agoHow do you study that exactly? How can you know that your losses on sports are covered by your gains in recruiting and fundraising? All the wealthiest schools are known for their academics, not their sports.
- joshuamorton 7y agoSchools recruit and fundraise betterin years with/after more successful football seasons. If you know how you fundraise at 6-6 vs 11-2, you can quantify the value of a coach who brings you 3 extra wins each season.
- rhizome 7y agoCool, and they wouldn't be doing anything without the school, so the money should go to the school's general fund.
- a3n 7y agoWouldn't it be cheaper to hand out more tenure, or at least eliminate adjunct and ensure that everyone has at least health insurance? As a start?
- alphaoverlord 7y agoMedical doctors at universities and medical schools generally make 50% of salaries for private practice.
- noipv4 7y agoAll the money is used to line the pockets of ever growing ranks of 'Administrators and Executive assistant' who are busy creating silly rules and pointless systems ;)
- dantheman 7y agoProbably can't pay the professors more money -- they're delivering that much value. But they can woo the professors back with flexible teaching arrangements that allow them to continue to teach while working.
- AndrewKemendo 7y agoIt's mostly not about money - though it's certainly a piece. It's about actual capacity to make an impact. At a major company as an "AI" practitioner, you have immense amounts of data to play with, a huge budget and (relatively) little oversight. As a researcher, you have to teach classes to undergrads, write grant proposals and scrounge around for data and project funding. Which do you think you'd rather do if you care about making functional progress in your field?