> It is hard to attract the best educational talent in this setting because salaries are usually capped and one can always make more in the private sector, but

> It is hard to attract the best educational talent in this setting because salaries are usually capped and one can always make more in the private sector, but a combination of job security and high prestige is usually enough to have decent staff. "Non-capped" salaries usually mean low median salary and very high salary for a few people with 'star' status for whom strings get pulled. And - that status, even in academia, is rarely due to stellar intellectual achievements. Rather, all sorts of fashionable business-related gurus expect to rake in large amounts of cash. A unionized academic faculty in universities, and a not-corrupt-and-bought union, allow for decent faculty salary. Add the benefit of relative autonomy in choosing one's research directions, and a tenure track that one actually has a chance of getting into, and it's an extremely attractive proposition.