I don't have the answer to this puzzle, but I want to bring up
the fact that there is price discrimination in academia.
Not all faculty pay scales are the same. At some
universitites (probably most) there is a different pay scale for
academic salaries for Business and Engineering (B/E) faculty. I
believe most physical scientists are included in this pay scale.
The difference is significant. At UC Irvine, the difference is
about 25-30% at some levels.
Additionally, I think engineering and computer science
professors are more likely than the aforementioned humanities
professors to get external funding, allowing them to pay themselves
the summer salary. This can boost their pay an additonal 33% or
more. I may be wrong about the ability of humanitites professors
to get grants, though.
One more thing. There is a lot of tolerance in
engineering departments for consulting. I think up to one day a
week is not unusual. This is an additional source of
income.
However, there are probably ways that humanities
professors can acquire income that is not really available to
engineering professors. I'd guess that books written by
humanities faculty make more money than most engineering texts (not
really money makers at all.).
I hope this helps.
John
An article in today's Chronicle by Robert Wright http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i31/31b02001.htm poses the obvious economic solution to the glut in the History PhD market: cut wages. He argues that cutting salaries eliminates non-price rationing and makes the market more efficient. However, I have a problem with this. Why don't colleges cut wages in glut disciplines such as history, philosophy, etc.? Certainly, economists and computer scientists command higher salaries to account for greater scarcity, indicating that schools do respond to labor market conditions. Why then are wages in glut disciplines so high? Also, why do people continue to enter the discipline when the expected wage is so low?
Some suggested answers:
1) Asymmetric info between administrators and departments. The administration keeps wages high to attract a large number of applicants to any job so that department hiring committees will have a harder time hiding candidates who make the current department look bad.
(But then why don't administrators do this for all disciplines?)
2) To attract good thinkers to become historians, schools must keep the wage high enough to compete with other disciplines and occupations that require intelligence. Therefore, it is beneficial to keep the wage high and sort applicants for non-wage purposes after the fact. That is PhDs who will work for 30K are not worth 30K. That is 40K historians are at the minimum level of competence. This explanation would also entail the poor screening of PhD worthiness by graduate schools. A school could easily gain a reputation for having only 40K PhDs, thereby cutting search costs, and outcompete other programs.
3) Interest group reasons. Faculty lobby for higher wages. (This answer is boring and I think incorrect, because current faculty bear the cost of the non-price rationing.)
In other words, I don't have a good answer. Anyone else want to give it a try?
JC
_________________________
John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D.
Department of Economics
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John A. Viator, Ph.D.
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John A. Viator, Ph.D.
Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic
1002 Health Sciences Road East
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92612
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: 949-824-3754
Fax: 949-824-6969
