Also you’re inferring a lot about what I feel about this guy. He seems very happy with his job, and with academia in general, and if he isn’t discontent with his salary then I’m not either. I was only responding to the comment that $80k might be an outlier low pay amount for a teaching PhD; in my experience, it is not.
The chair of the math department at my alma mater pulled in $235k last year. He’s been a tenure-track PhD for 20-30 years. That’s a pretty good salary, but he also has a ton of responsibility and a ton of research requirements. Very stressful job.
I strongly suspect there are failures of the free-market economy that prevent teachers (at least, those who are good at what they do but lack certain credentials) from making as much as they ought to based on all the pros and cons of the job. I don’t think it rises to the level of warranting a new national law to force the issue, though.
I do know a number of merchants have taken the matter into their own hands and give a discount to educators.
So when you say tenure-track, do you mean he has tenure? Because being in a position that may grant tenure but hasn’t yet for 25-30 years sounds like he’s being strung along.
The truly shocking aspect of non tenured low pay is how those educators don’t even get the same pay and benefits given to the ever growing number of employees in administration. How crazy is that? The ones teaching take a backseat to the administrators? Insane.
Just another “market failure” I guess.
Is it really a market failure? Or does it say aggregate preferences are such that admin jobs suck compared to teaching that they have to be higher compensated?
Nah, I see it as confusing the 2 concepts of price and value. Markets forces affect prices. No doubt.
But that doesn’t immediately translate to value going up or down. Most adults eventually come to this conclusion, often because they recognize when they’ve found they have paid too much for a crappy product or service.
Eh, if you are paying someone a low wage given their education and knowledge and skills and experience then I think it’s fair to say that you undervalue them.
K-12 teachers may be getting market wages but I think they are undervalued too.
I also think the average teacher quality would increase if they got paid more. Many people won’t consider that profession due to the low wages. Luckily some gifted teachers still do, but we could use more.
I feel like teaching salaries should be in line with nursing pay (they compete for a lot of the same student population)
Nursing pay has really taken off the last few years. Teaching pay is really starting to lag behind
I’m not sure there is an easy way to find additional teacher pay without pissing off the tax payer base. So it will most likely have to be done slowly and incrementally
Part of the problem may be people’s perceptions of the two professions. Nurses are regarded highly by most folks whereas taxpayers who struggled in school may have a negative perception of teachers that hurts them in contract negotiations.
I have to wonder how much of this is due to travel nurses. Our local hospital has fired a lot of the staff, cut overtime, etc., and instead is hiring more traveling nurses for >$100k/year. I hear this isn’t terribly uncommon. I can only assume the hospital is willing to pay more for less work done because the non-travel nurses are unionized at my location, and they can fire the travel nurses at will. But that’s only my guess.
You don’t need a teaching degree to sub (and in my state during covid, you didn’t even need a college degree), but you definitely need a nursing degree to nurse.
