Say What?

Every now and then, IHE publishes a piece like this that amazes me for its lack of a fact base and its poorly argued theses. We have ridiculous statements such as this: “Consider a college that has some extra money to spend on faculty salaries.” And what college might that be? Or this: “Compared to assistant professors, tenured professors rarely switch jobs.” Oh, yeah? Evidence, please, adjusted for time in rank. Or perhaps this: “[Assistant professors] usually spend more time on class preparation because they have taught their classes relatively few times.” Well, that surely justifies higher pay. As an administrator who hires assistant professors, I can tell you that our senior ones spend a good deal of their day mentoring them on research, teaching, service, advising and a lot more. However, the silliest theme of this piece is that what is preached here is practiced in the risk-taking business world that fires, outsources or downsizes experience, leaving us the marvelous economy that we now enjoy. Here’s a thought: Apply the inane theory here to the workplace. Deloitte, the top accounting firm in the country, has no performance bonus for the most junior staff but is known as a company where new hires can develop. That’s what assistant professors do: they develop. Some work out, others don’t. Moreover, salary compression is the one problem that most of us in administration are trying to address, especially as it pertains to women and minorities. This article just isn’t helpful except to appeal to junior faculty looking for an advocate while trying to attain tenure. When they do, they get a pay increase typically along with the promotion. When they don’t, they often find an institution more in line with their talents. Report on that, and you’ll be informing the IHE audience.

Michael Bugeja, Director at Greenlee School, at 6:10 am EDT on September 2, 2008

and after the first round?

And when these assistant professors get tenured, the new assistant professors must be paid even more than the newly tenured, and so on and so forth...until after a few rounds of hiring, new assistant professors get paid more than the university president!

This program doesn’t make much sense at all.

Bruce McCullough, at 9:10 am EDT on September 2, 2008

Cloud Cuckoo Land

This really takes the cake as the dumbest comment by an academic economist on this site.

In addition to the flaws mentioned in the previous comments, Miller’s fundamental premise is wrong in that it omits another important reason for pay: to reward cumulative accomplishments and thereby encourage more. Miller’s proposal would do the opposite: by failing to reward accomplishments, it would discourage post-tenure research and teaching. Why continue to work at or above the pre-tenure standard if there is no reward?

Second, his proposal ignores the dynamic effects of such a change. Even if tenured profs move less often now, a matter about which he provides no evidence, they surely would move more once a college adopted this peculiar pay structure. An economically sensible professor would eagerly join the faculty for the extra pre-tenure pay, then jump ship after tenure to work at an institution that rewards productive faculty in their middle and later years.

Third, even if the faculty remained in place, the result would be a two-humped distribution of high pay for untenured faculty and for the superstars and low pay for everyone in between. I couldn’t imagine a system more calculated to destroy faculty morale and institutional loyalty. Miller’s ideal college would be a very unhappy place. The resulting ill will would not endear the juniors to their seniors, which in turn would have nasty effects on tenure decisions.

I could go on, but this poppycock idea isn’t worth it. Half-baked suggestions like this give academics the bad reputation for practical ignorance that they sometimes deserve.

Dennis Nolan, Professor Emeritus at University of South Carolina, at 10:00 am EDT on September 2, 2008

Pay for performance

Perhaps things are different at Professor Miller’s college, but at the institutions I’ve been affiliated with the senior faculty do more research, and have greater research impact; they support and train more graduate students; they get better teaching evaluations in their undergraduate classes; they serve as department chairs and in other leadership roles; they do essentially all the curricular development; and, incidentally, they staff hiring committees to hire junior faculty.

As dean, I’ve rarely had a retention battle for a junior faculty member that was nearly as hard fought as is common when I have a senior faculty member testing the waters elsewhere. The stakes for us are simply higher in the latter case.

Don’t get me wrong — I care deeply about my junior faculty, and know that they are working very hard under enormously stressful conditions. (I was an assistant professor once too.) I do what I can to help them establish research programs, by providing set up funds and renovation, and their chairs provide teaching relief and the services of the center for teaching and learning. I hope every one of my junior faculty develops into an outstanding, tenured senior faculty member. But they aren’t there yet.

Anon R1 dean, at 10:25 am EDT on September 2, 2008

Excellent article

There is an important point to be made here. Many departments have tenured faculty who are no long very productive in terms of research. Therefore they are, in reality, no threat to leave for a new position. Because schools usually have high standards to hire someone with tenure, these professors actually have no options outside their current jobs. Suppose administrators told them they would no longer receive any raises, they would still keep their jobs.

Thus I think the point isn’t that all assistant professors should receive higher salaries, but that higher salaries should reflect the professor’s value. Senior faculty with high salaries and no production should receive no raises.

rightwingprofessor, at 11:05 am EDT on September 2, 2008

Not as crazy as my colleagues here are saying

I’m fascinated by the critiques here. I’m not an economist, I changed my major in college because it would have required more economics courses than I could stomach, and as an experimental psychologist I can’t fathom the relatively high weight economists put on theory compared to data. However, this is a case where there are data to support this thesis. Further, some of the critics here don’t appear to be reading the essay as closely as they ought to... Data: Salary compression! My first faculty position was at a Research I institution, and I was paid more than some tenured associate professors because the department hired at “market rates” for new faculty, but the state had been providing salary increases for existing faculty at a lower rate of increase. Did anyone leave because of the salary compression? No. Did they complain? Oh, yes. To me, as if it were my fault that I was paid what I was. I even got an implicit threat because my incentive package (startup $ for research, course releases, salary) was too high for his liking. Did he leave? No. Parsing the argument: In the chart in the essay, the author shows consistent raises ($3K per year) for the assistant and the tenured faculty. But there is a note that after tenure, the raises stop or slow down so that the newly tenured soon approaches the salary of the other tenured (whose salaries continue to rise over time). Meanwhile, everything continues to rise, so that incoming new faculty are paid more but not in an ever-increasing spiral that makes the proposal go out of control. This is not a bad proposal, except that it makes everyone go ballistic... because it makes explicit what happens implicitly all the time. It’s just salary compression/inversion made systematic, and for reasons that make sense to me. Aah, but then, I’m drifting into administration... welcome to the Dark Side... lol

Ray, at 11:10 am EDT on September 2, 2008

Tenure/Pay/Adjuncts

How about paying people what they are worth, based on time, attendance and competency. I have been an Adjunct for 10 years and really enjoy teaching. I don’t do it full time because I have developed a lifestyle of which I have grown fond. This “new” lifestyle also includes eating regularly, something I may not be able to do as a “tenured” professor. However, if I could have a closet to hang my coat between classes and maybe an umbrella space, I may teach an additional ten years because I will be in bliss! Prof. Henderson

Paul Henderson, Director at NYC Probation, at 5:00 pm EDT on September 2, 2008

Paying adjuncts based on experience

Paul and Ralph make excellent points. If you believe in paying based on experience then long time adjuncts should make very high relative salaries, often higher than many full professors do.

Of course, since adjuncts have no political power at colleges, schools usually pay them as little as the market will allow. In contrast, because tenured professors run most schools they are able to push the wages of many tenured professors up well beyond what it would take to keep them at their jobs.

James D. Miller, Associate Professor at Smith College, at 10:03 am EDT on September 3, 2008

Many tenured faculty do not do research. The difference in “job content'’ between them and adjuncts is primarily administration (the noble-sounding “service'’ usually means administration). Yet they routinely make three to five times the salary of an adjunct teaching the same number of classes. If the difference in benefits is included, the factor would be more like four to six.The people making the most money (deans, provosts, etc.) are full-time administrators doing (in my experience) no teaching.

I agree that administration is worth something, but is it really worth this much more, in a university, than teaching? Returning to the subject of the original article, the fact that experience counts for absolutely nothing in determining the salary of adjuncts (at least in my experience) is another sign that teaching is not taken seriously, is not considered a real profession.

Ralph deLaubenfels, at 5:20 pm EDT on September 3, 2008

To James D. Miller

Professor Miller, I look forward to reading _Principles of Microeconomics_. Your article seems to me a faint—very faint—echo of a principle set forth in Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, _The Political Economy of Participatory Economics_, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991, and again in Albert’s _Parecon_, 2003.

I enter this discussion late, hoping you see this. If ever you have a look at either book I’d appreciate your comments (some colleagues and I are doing research on what such a political economy, over time, would do to culture).

Thanks, 875432@verizon.net

Karin Foster, at 8:35 am EDT on September 5, 2008

Karin Foster,

I haven’t read The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, but I would be happy to discuss the principle you refer to if you describe it to me. Of course, I understand with classes just starting you might not have time to do this.

Jim MillerEconomicProf@Yahoo.com

James D. Miller, at 12:20 pm EDT on September 5, 2008

Why don’t tenured humanities profs earn more?

Becuase they don’t do anything most people find valueable and worth paying for. They spend most of their time trying to create theories and convince others of their theories and the point of those theories are “rich people are evil and they owe me money". Science professors help our quality of life, some perhaps indirectly. Humanities profs are destroying the fabric of a civilization that took millenia to create but only a few generations to undo.

“Hey Ho Western Civ has got to go.” No, humanites professors have got to go...

mike, at 5:50 pm EDT on September 5, 2008

I doubt we agree

Sorry Malvern,I doubt we agree. I’m a captitalist that believes in very moderate government regulation, e.g. anti trust laws. I’m not a socialist or communist. I like our institutions just the way they are. I suspect people who try to make everyone equal. That is the road to totalitarianism. “Making it all fair” always means taking money from rich and productive people and giving it to — you, all in the name of “fairness".

mike, at 3:10 pm EDT on September 7, 2008

The Value of Economists

I, too, have doubts about the workability of Miller’s proposal, but I find it a stimulating thought-experiment. I think some of the commentators aren’t appreciating that Miller is doing a couple of the things, here, that economists are really good at: namely, asking questions about incentive structures and pointing out that it is at least *not obvious* why things are as they are. Is it really *obvious* that senior, tenured professors should be the most highly-paid? Surely it is at least not *obvious.*A proposal like Miller’s — even if utterly unworkable — is a service if it gets us to think through carefully just *why* it’s unworkable.

Chris MacDonald, Associate Professor (Philosophy) at Saint Mary’s University, Canada, at 11:00 am EDT on September 12, 2008