Re: salaries off the pay scale

Behraad,

I agree with you, except I am not sure that notions of "fairness" should be brought into the discussion. Many people outside of academia envy our relatively cushy jobs and relatively high salaries, and view these outcomes as "unfair." Of course, they do not see or fully appreciate the huge investments we have all made in building our human capital.

There is no God-given law, as far as I know, that the return to different human capital investments should be the same, or even close to each other. In fact, persistent discrepancies in human capital returns should serve as a signal for prospective PhD students as to where their investments are likely to be most highly valued in the market place.

Regards,

David

From: "Behraad Bahreyni" <bba19@sfu.ca>
To: "Ronda Arab" <ronda_arab@sfu.ca>
Cc: "Faculty Forum Mail List" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 4:20:18 PM
Subject: Re: salaries off the pay scale

I think this is partially based on "What else can you do?" rather than "What do you do?". I had a 20% cut in my salary when I joined the university as a faculty member, but still did it because I loved the job. On top of it, the raise in may salary has been far slower than what I know for my former colleagues in industry; my salary right now is about 30-40% below what it could have been had I stayed in industry. My working hours have also increased significantly and 60+ hour work weeks are the norm. This may be too much to ask from many people.

In many fields, you will simply lose good people, or will not be able to attract them in the first place, if you do not offer such incentives. It sounds unfair, but I do not see a simple solution around it that will still ensure top people in all fields become professors.

My 2 cents,
Behraad

On 2013-05-29 2:05 PM, Ronda Arab wrote:

Hello all,

I know that market differentials and retention awards are a controversial issue, but I can't help but feel it is something that needs to be discussed.

I was poking around on the Vancouver Sun public sector salary database and I came upon an Assistant Professor in Business Administration whose salary for 2011/2012 is listed as $126,355. Obviously, I am not going to give this person's name, but I did look Assistant Prof X up and discovered that s/he has been teaching at SFU since 2009, the year s/he graduated with the PhD. On the newly revised 2012 salary scale, this is the equivalent of a Full Professor step 14.

I recognize that market differentials are used in departments in danger of losing top faculty to other universities that offer higher salaries than SFU, and to a degree I think this is necessary and justified. However, is it really justifiable and necessary to pay an assistant professor the equivalent of a full professor step 14?

Thoughts?

Ronda Arab