Armchairs,
Here's a question that puzzles me every now and then. People from all walks
of life tend to complain that their salaries are (injustly) low. Ok, why
not
complain, right?
I too have often noticed this. I have concluded that such complaints should
carry no weight whatsoever. Here's why. Imagine that someone believes they
are underpaid. If their belief is correct, they could seek another job and
receive a higher salary. In my experience, the people who complain do not
seek other jobs (or they do so unsuccessfully). I conclude their belief
about being underpaid is false. Put another way, the complainers evaluate
themselves according to their (self ascribed) "merit". Labor markets, on the
other hand, evaluate them according to their value to others. Which
evaluation should we trust? Someone who is the judge in their own case or an
institution that assimilates the judgments of many individuals who have
practical concerns in mind? Labor market policies should be based on value,
not merit.
But when I think of professors, particularly university faculty and --if you
push me harder-- economics faculty, I just get wonder: Are they really
being
underpaid as they often complain?
......
So, are professors really underpaid? (if such statement makes any sense at
all).
In general, we have good reason to believe that tenured colleague professors
are overpaid. The labor market for college professors is cartelized by the
practice of tenure. No holder of tenure ever has to compete for his or her
position against an alternative. That's the micro side. The macro side of
things has a lot to do with demography. The rapid expansion of universities
in the 60s and 70s led to faculties being "tenured up" by about 1975.
Programs continued to produce PhDs in large numbers thereafter. Predictably,
political science - the field I am most familiar with - saw hundreds of
applicants for many positions in the 80s and 90s. Had tenure not existed,
this supply of new PhDs would have bid down the salaries of PhDs hired in
the 60s and 70s. Long before that happened I suspect the number of new PhDs
would have been reduced to roughly the number of new positions open.
I am not certain about nontenured college professors. Their market seems
pretty sticky to me. However, they are at least hypothetically open to
competition.
John Samples
Washington, DC
