This Family Does Not Need Big Bonuses

Midas Mulligan MagooThe argument in nuanced and complex. It isn't simply a trade-off between salary/cost-of-living. Being a Professor at the University of Chicago brings a certain level of prestige, one that by-and-large (IMHO) is ego and not efficiency driven.

Folks in academic elite circles (think Ivy League profs, for example) have long been the backbone of elitist logic. It is now they and not their grant giving patrician superiors (whom they have done the bidding of for so long) who are getting the short end of the stick, so-to-speak.

It is simply a reaction based on perceived realities. On one hand I do understand the prof and the feelings of a lifetime of hard work going to waste. Reality waits for no man, however, and with the proliferation of the e-learning traditional academic institutions are bound to lose some of their luster over time and this has to be passed-down to the professors' own levels of prestige and salary. Inevitability hits hard. But it is inevitable.

What this misses, I think, is the value academics place on respect from their peers. I think that if you asked professors which they would rather have, respect/prestige from the public or acclaim from their small community of biogeochemists studying arsenic redox chemistry, 90% would choose the latter. Although, it is very possible that that my experiences in science and engineering academic circles are not applicable to law.