<p>Thought this article might be interesting to a few of you.</p>
<p>I haven't seen it posted anywhere else.</p>
<p>As that article is 48 pages long - I am not going to take the time to read it (sorry) - but the introductory paragraphs suggest that it is based on the assumption that college profs. would be more knowledgeable about the "quality" of various colleges.</p>
<p>While that might be true, I'd like to not that there are reciprocity agreements between some colleges that enable children of faculty at other colleges to attend without tuition, or with substantial reduction of tuition. Given the fact that college profs tend not to be wealthy, I would think that would be a significant factor related to choice of college. So unless the article or surveys on which it is based accounts for the cost factor, it may be missing the boat on "quality" .... as opposed to "value".</p>
<p>You obviously didn't get past the first paragraph. Most of the article id about tuition remission. Its written by an economist after all.</p>
<p>For some reason a lot of professors children go to Carleton.</p>
<p>My D3 is going to be at University of Toronto in the fall and she's been studying their website diligently. She showed me a page last night which lists the professors who earn more than $100,000. It's a required disclosure of compensation policies at the school and I haven't seen anything like that discussed about U.S. schools. Granted, I haven't looked for such a page at D1 or D2's schools. Was just wondering if anyone else had seen this for their kids' colleges. I'm not sure what definition people use for considering someone wealthy but the comment about most profs not being wealthy reminded me of this list. I didn't count how many were on it but the profs are listed alphabetically and for the letter <em>A</em> alone, there were over 50, so the list contains many hundreds of professors, perhaps over a thousand. Anyone know how that compares?</p>
<p>There's a huge difference in salaries among universities.
The starting salary for a wealthy LAC such as Wellesley is equal to, if not higher than, the salary of a tenured prof at a state university such as Oregon.
Within the same university, there probably is also a susbtantial discrepancy among profs of the same age and rank who belong to different departments. For example, economists command higher salaries than profs of English, and may also actually teach fewer courses. The higher salaries and lower teaching load are intended to keep them in academia, resisting the lure of business. English profs do not have the same outside opportunities and therefore command lower salaries. Faculties of professional schools also tend to command higher salaries than profs in the arts and sciences.
Finally, an increasing proportion of faculty are adjuncts and paid by the course and are far from commanding six figure salaries.</p>
<p>And, let's not forget that Canadian dollars are somewhere between 20 and 25% less than the US dollar, so that while $75,000-$80,000 is not chicken feed, it is far from wealthy.</p>
<p>Also in many situations, professors have outside income relatated to their professions. Though their base pay from the college may be a certain amount, they may get grants for research, paid for speeches and workshops, write for money, teach privately (the performing arts especially), so it is really difficult to gauge what the income was. When I worked at Hopkins there was a brouha because John Barth was hired at an astronomiical pay rate because of his celebrity. So among the faculty there are wide variances. A couple of years ago, NYU was hiring well known economics profs and researchers to build that department, and the pay for those were causing a furor among the faculty there.</p>
<p>concerneddad, don't worry, I'm well aware of the difference in the $. I lived there for many years! The list, though, is of those who make a minimum of $100,000. They're all OVER that amount and range up to the $500,000 mark. I'm not one who thinks that $100,000 is wealthy, in either country, I was simply curious how those numbers compared to U.S. professors.</p>
<p>jamimom, I had a question for you in another thread but I guess you didn't see it so I'll repost it here. It was in the one about Canadian schools and you said something about them not offering the same amenities as U.S. schools. Can you tell me what you meant? Thanks!</p>
<p>Well, my wife is a prof. at our state's flagship U., and she makes nowhere near that kind of money (sigh)!</p>
<p>I agree with Carleton - I know two children of professors who have been there. Both turned down Ivy league schools for Carleton, with their parent's approval.</p>
<p>Mirite is very correct that there are huge salary differentials between specializations and fields in colleges and universities. Each discipline has its own "market" and colleges that are competing for the best faculty have to pay market rates. And so even within the social sciences there is a hierarchy that goes something like this: econ, psychology, polisci, soc, geog, anthro.</p>
<p>That said, different "leagues" or "tiers" pay different average salaries. The same recent political science PhD might be offered $70K or more starting salary by a top 20 department (see USNews rankings), $55-$60K by next 10-20, or less than $50K by lower tier or simply less competitive department.</p>
<p>Offering tuition benefits to faculty brats as a "perk" is more limited now than it used to be. The private universities do the best in this regard, often offering "free" tuition at their own school, and a heavily subsidized tuition at sister schools (say, Ivy to Ivy). Public universities, however, don't usually offer as good a deal to their faculty. They may offer "free" tuition or "half tuition" at their own institution (mine offers half) but generally speaking no subsidy for faculty brats who attend another college or university.</p>
<p>When my kids were looking for colleges, I did feel that I had some "inside" knowledge (sometimes negative) about a number of places, and I had visited dozens of colleges and universities over the years. But in the end, the kids of college profs have the same kinds of variables to consider as anybody else: quality of overall education, strengths in particular fields, atmospherics, cost, location, etc. The availability of a subsidy may be one factor but it figures in as a fairly minor one for most of the people I know in academia.</p>
<p>Earlham, in huge numbers (as if anything at Earlham could be huge).</p>
<p>I think this is a really hard subject to generalize because at the end of the day, professors are parents like the rest of us and are having some of the same money talks in their homes as we are having in ours. </p>
<p>I agree with Mac's statement that the tuition perk is more limited than it used to be. And even with the free tutition perk, many kids don't want to be at the place where their parents work, because after being at the school for so many other school sponsored events, when its time to go to college, they are looking to "go" some place, not to attend the same school they have been at for many years.</p>
<p>I remember when my sister was an HR manager at Columbia, they use to offer full tutition remission for their schools (CC, SEAS, barnard,graduate, professional schools, etc) and half tutition at any college outside of the Columbia umbrella. The child of one of her best friends got admitted into Columbia with the full tutition remission benefit, and even thought they lived literally a good 5 minute walk from the school, D wanted the "whole' college experience and wanted to live in the dorms and all it entailed (so tack on the room, board, etc).</p>
<p>My the same token when I was at NYU, they only offered tutition remission at their schools only.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I agree with Carleton - I know two children of professors who have been there. Both turned down Ivy league schools for Carleton, with their parent's approval.
[/quote]
well golly-gee!!! I can add one more to that list!! :)</p>
<p>Pomana's president has a child at Carleton who turned down Harvard for it.</p>
<p>The professors who are parents of kids in my daughters grad class make pretty good money. Their kids are at carleton/macalester/Uchicago and RISD</p>
<p>My daughter also has a dormmate whose dad is prof at UChicago and he gets a tuition wavier for Reed College.</p>
<p>We have a faculty kid and he just might be at the U of Miami. We are having a great visit and are very impressed with what Miami has to offer. I will post at greater length on our return.</p>
<p>Our older D went the LAC route. I don't know that there is any pattern, really. Often faculty kids go to top schools because they have the grades/scores to get in. Sometimes they take advantage of tuition reciprosity plans but many teach at schools that do not offer such plans, like state institutions. Faculty parents have the same struggles as everyone else to pay for it - some manage more easily, most worry about how they'll do it on their salaries.</p>
<p>More on our return. Off to the library and bookstore!</p>
<p>I looked at the appendices. I have to wonder about the authors who, in listing universities and colleges alphabetically, think that Yale comes before Washington University.</p>
<p>Sorry I missed your question, Alwaysamom. Can't find that other thread so will post here. My n ce's mother was Canadian so we researched that option for her. Not as deeply as we could have as she decided that she wanted a small school and most of those choices where big schools. However, we did look at McGill, UBC and compared it to the US OSU, also a large school near a city. THe biggest difference seemed to me that kids really do have to fend for themselves at these schools. Very few students live in college housing , and there are far more commuters than you would see at flagship unis. Now this was years ago, my niece is now 26 years old, and when we looked around both colleges, there was a definite feel that you needed to be really independent whereas at the US schools there seems to be an amusement park feel right on campus with many things to do. The city is a very important component of college life whereas at schools of that size in the US are pretty much self contained with absolutely everything to cater to the student. </p>
<p>I think that they are more like the US schools than the European unis which I feel are more like graduate programs in the US, but there just is not that same "all together" feeling that you get at the big flagship schools. Kids are expected to be more independent and there isn't as much of a "catering to the kids" feeling there. Though there are more ECs and organized sports than there are in the European schools, things just don't look as though they are as well funded as they are in the US flagship univerisites which I was comparing them with, really due to the sheer size. </p>
<p>IT is really an atmosphere issue and certainly no reflection on the college. We know a number of kids who went to and are at McGill and they love the place. I would daresay that the quality of students there academically seemed to be very high overall for such a large school, and was told that is the case for the Canadian universities.</p>