<p>I know this discussion has come up with high schools, but was wondering if, IN GENERAL, the same holds true for college professors.</p>
<p>I suspect what you’ll find is that there’s a much wider pay range for privates than publics, with the lowest-paying privates falling below the public range and the highest-paying privates well above it. But that’s just a semi-educated guess.</p>
<p>That would be my guess, too. The only thing is I don’t think there are that many, percentage-wise, above the public schools. Anyone else have an opinion?</p>
<p>The most consistent split in pay for university professors is that those teaching in graduate-only programs (like law school, med school, MBA school) make much more than those teaching in the liberal arts. We’re talking twice as much or even more at a lot of universities.</p>
<p>I agree with Hanna and would throw engineering into the mix as well. Pretty much any field where there are high paying jobs to be fairly readily found outside of academia will find higher pay scales within academia.</p>
<p>Often the better/more prestigious universities will pay their faculty less (since people are willing to work there anyway).
The ones in less desirable geographic areas also often have to pay more to attract top recruits. There is a basic “range”, but it is pretty wide to begin with, and the university can always pay more to attract the star faculty members if they wish.</p>
<p>Oh yes, some colleges, especially the privates, have special pools of money to attract the superstars. USC has such a fund, so nowadays the joke is that USC stands for University of Stolen Colleagues.</p>
<p>Yes, the University of Washington is know for having a lower pay scale due to their desirable location.</p>
<p>(I speak with some knowledge about both these places since my H worked at both.)</p>
<p>My DH teaches at a UC. I don’t know that the pay scales themselves are all that different from private schools, but the privates sure have the publics beat in terms of perks, and in terms of flexibility with the packages they can offer new hires.</p>
<p>The Chronicle of Higher Education lists the pay for all the professorial ranks for each school in the US. The better private schools do pay more for their faculty than that of many public schools. Moreover, public school pay does vary considerably even among the state universities within the same state. For example, pay for the University of Maryland for professors is about 20K more than that of the pay for Towson University,which is also part of the Maryland state university system.</p>
<p>In addition, pay for certain majors such as business, engineering, law and medicine is much higher than the pay for most other disciplines.</p>
<p>My uncle works for a prestigious university (Ivy League) and makes most of his $$ from consulting. He considers his salary a kind of base pay and then does other more lucrative things on the side.</p>
<p>Average annual salary by academic rank, 2008-09:</p>
<p>Stanford:
Assistant Prof. $100,800
Associate Prof. $128,000
Professor $181,900</p>
<p>Caltech:
Assistant Prof. $105,500
Associate Prof. $126,200
Professor $172,500</p>
<p>UC Berkeley:
Assistant Prof. $81,300
Associate Prof. $96,100
Professor $143,500</p>
<p>UC Irvine
Assistant Prof. $75,100
Associate Prof. $84,600
Professor $131,800</p>
<p>Pomona College:
Assistant Prof. $75,100
Associate Prof. $96,600
Professor $135,300</p>
<p>Pitzer College:
Assistant Prof. $69,100
Associate Prof. $85,500
Professor $110,500</p>
<p>Source: AAUP/Chronicle of Higher Education</p>
<p>This disparity is pretty typical. Generally the top private universities pay significantly more than both the top publics and top LACs; top research universities (public and private) pay better than lower-ranked universities (public and private) and LACs; top LACs generally pay better than lower-ranked LACs, and so on. To some degree, though, the disparity between LACs and universities reflects a different mix of fields. As others have pointed out, liberal arts fields generally pay less than law, medicine, business, or engineering; and within the liberal arts, sciences often pay better than humanities or social sciences.</p>
<p>I would have thought that UC profs made more money than that. It’s expensive to live in Calif.</p>
<p>^ You’re darned right, it’s expensive to live in California. That makes it difficult for the UCs to attract some faculty they want, both at the entry-level and at the senior lateral level. But they do a fantastic job with what they’ve got, they can always find some people for whom the prestige outshines the money, and once people come, many never want to leave even if they could make more elsewhere. That could change, though. The mandatory “furlough” days currently being imposed on UC faculty—essentially just a 10% across-the-board pay cut, since they don’t get any reduction in their workload, only in their pay envelope—is a real kick in the teeth for a lot of faculty who feel they’re already underpaid relative to their peers across the Bay at Stanford or elsewhere around the country, especially when you take cost of living into account. Some will leave. And that threatens the very foundations of the UC system. It’s a real crisis.</p>
<p>^^^^ In fact, some of the top faculty at UCs are already bailing out. The head of UCLA law school just went to the University of Chicago. I will bet that many of the really top notch, well-known faculty are probably sending out feelers for jobs.</p>
<p>^^^
It’s expensive to live in the nice areas around Chicago, too. UChi must be paying him the big bucks! An endowed chair perhaps?</p>
<p>But, I wouldn’t be surprised to see profs going to schools in other areas that will pay them more AND will have a lower Cost of Living.</p>
<p>I saw a report by UVa that went beyond the AAUP numbers and looked at total comp. They were coming UVa to UWis and the AAUP number was about $20K lower for UW but when they did total comp the gap was only a few thousand. Lots of ways to look at it.</p>
<p>In fairness, U Chicago law school is ranked quite a bit higher than UCLA. It may not have been the money.</p>
<p>As a faculty wife, I sure wish I could get my DH to apply for a job that would pay him more money and have a lower cost of living. Unfortunately, those aren’t the major reasons why professors choose to be professors. I’d agree with barrons that it’s tough to measure compensation “apples to apples.” There are grad assistants, research monies, housing allowances, pension plans, access to consulting gigs and a whole slew of other things that figure into the total compensation mix.</p>
<p>It’s not that tough to measure compensation when a school mandates a 10% or more furlough. If I were a Nobel Prize winner or had a major reputation in my field, I certainly would be looking around at schools if that happened to me. Obviously, the good professors, who aren’t as well known as well as the ones near retirement, won’t leave. Thus, I don’t know how many faculty will feel this way.</p>
<p>Honestly taxguy: If you were a Nobel Prize winner at UC Berkely and had a fabulous house with a Bay view, and tons of on the side consulting jobs and lots of research money and a generous sabbatical policy would you really leave because part of your salary had dropped a bit?</p>
<p>Qialah, First, if I had all these grant connections, they would go with me. Also, I personally would be affronted by these cuts. It has more to do with the money. I will admit that professors that are extremely well-off might not care. I, however, would care.</p>
<p>Remember, we are NOT talking about everyone. All you need is a few top, well-known professors, at each of the better UC campuses, to leave in order to dramatically affect a school’s reputation and rankings.</p>