I think the labour cost of university teaching has increased in the US: 1. I think (I haven't tried to dredge up numbers) that in the US, face-to-face time wit

I think the labour cost of university teaching has increased in the US: 1. I think (I haven't tried to dredge up numbers) that in the US, face-to-face time with professors has reduced for each student on average, but face-to-face time with more junior academic staff has increased greatly. To make a comparison between countries, rather than across time, certainly the number of supervised teaching hours per week I have seen in US universities has been much higher than even in the highest-rated universities in the UK and Germany. 2. The labour costs are not just in-class teaching time, but also all work that is attached to teaching activity. Much more effort is put into "compliance" issues than before (e.g., dealing with legal challenges to grades, and I think that admissions is a much more expensive process than before). 3. The most sought-after faculty (star professors) do earn much more than before, and for at least some faculties, the pay for star professors is proportionally high. 4. Faculty turnover is higher. I'm sure concrete figures exist - I'd certainly like to see a solid analysis of labour cost trends in the US and elsewhere.