in most large institutions ... the notion of performance based pay is a
myth ... since it is easy to document clear differences in performance for
faculty in different Colleges .. where pay is lopsided in favor of a
favored college (like business) even when productivity (however you define
it) goes in favor of the faculty member in the NON favored college
there are huge college to college internal differences in salary ... having
absolutely zip ... zero ... zilch to do with performance differences of any
kind
in fact ... the largest single factor that "explains" variance in salaries
... along with rank ... is college location (ie, what college you happen to
be in)
i also think that in most large institutions ... we have two broad classes
of faculty ... these is a small group of those we might call "stars" ...
that nobel laureate jim mentioned ... or others who have by any imaginable
criterion ... have "shone" in the discipline ... nationally and
internationally ... THESE FOLKS SHOULD BE MAKING TONS OF MONEY
(maybe in the MIT case ... there are 1/2 of these stars that happen to be
males ... i don't know)
and, these are peppered throughout the institution ... across ALL the
colleges and disciplines ... and a star in one college should earn about
the same as a star in another college ... i can't see any real
justification for not doing that
then you have the rest of us ... general .. hard working faculty ... sure,
lots of variation still ... but, within a rank ... and with about the same
years IN that rank ... i don't see much to argue for compensating these
folks too much differently ... as long as their jobs are roughly the same
.... they teach ... they advise ... they do some research ... they serve on
university committees ... so on and so forth. their movement UP through the
ranks ... passing over all those hurdles ... justifies in my book ...
salaries being approximately the same for the same status of tenure, rank,
and years in rank
to start doing regression analysis and splitting salary hairs this way
seems so out of touch with the noise in this system ... as to be rather
comical ...
i do NOT object to stars being paid a whole lot more than regular folks ...
i DO object to there being vastly different salaries for regular folks just
because one works in college A ... and another on works in college B
for faculty morale ... and a sense of worth ... and for faculty to give it
their best shot to help the institution (ie, be loyal) ... there needs to
be some sort of approximate equity ... in compensation ...
at penn state, and this is probably true in most other large schools ...
the administration really cares little about huge gaps in salary ACROSS
disciplines or academic colleges ... and does essentially NOTHING ever to
try to make compensation more equitable for us regular folk
but, when they go to the legislature ... they opine about the need for more
salary dollars ... to keep faculty from running away ... or to be able to
attract faculty ... but this is really for certain disciplines ... NOT to
try to make salaries more equitable across the board
personally, it matters not much to me if penn state is more down the list
(in average salaries) compared to illinois ... or michigan ... though i
know that the administration worries about that
what i do worry about is trying to compensate in a much fairer way and
equitable way ... those faculty who actually work HERE ... (and i would say
that about illinois ... or michigan too)
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
