The university doesn't operate in a vacuum, and the rest of the economy doesn't really care about the fairness of internal pay structures at the universities. T

The university doesn't operate in a vacuum, and the rest of the economy doesn't really care about the fairness of internal pay structures at the universities. The engineers aren't telling you it's fair that they get paid more than a professor, they're just relaying the reality of the market, and the university still gets it's labor from the market. This does play well into my argument that if software salaries in general came down then the rest of the world could utilize software development more broadly across industries, rather than concentrating so much talent into one inflated industry niche (the tech industry is that niche).