What Price Professors

IN THE post-Sputnik clamor over the deficiencies of higher education in the United States, the economic plight of the university professor has been so convincingly dramatized that it is now almost disloyal for him not to feel sorry for his colleagues, and overtly snobbish of him not to engage in self-pity. Yet amidst the many self-righteous tears that are being shed over this cause celbre, the nature of the problem is often misunderstood, its real causes lost sight of, and its alternative solutions seldom clearly distinguished and evaluated. The plight of the university professor, in the words of an articulate victim, is a socio-economic one.' Economically, his is low: he earns less than the bartender, the paper hanger, and the city garbage collector. Socially, he is obscure and inconsequential: because of his paltry income, a money-minded society gives him a lowly social status. Since this paper is concerned with the economic plight of the professor, the matter of social status can safely be put aside. Inasmuch as the latter is determined largely by size of income, the problem is chiefly economic and can be treated as such.2 But before examining the reasons for low pay and the possibility of raising it, two points must be made explicit. First, it should be noted that the popularly accepted symbol of professorial poverty is no more than a simple statistical which in many respects distorts the true picture. It is well known that the normal university salary covers only the thirty-two-week academic year and less than the regular work week. Equally familiar is the knowledge that the academic salary does not include the many fringe benefits provided by the college. What is not so clearly appreciated, however, is that by almost no standard (for example, type of institution, quality of instruction, degree of professional competence, or extent of alternative opportunities) can a college professor be said to belong to an identifiable competing group whose average income could be mean

Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Higher education · Labour economics · Mathematics education · Political science · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Research Studies · Psychology