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Phi Beta Cons

The Right take on higher education.


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Joe Biden: Faculty Salaries Are Too High

Last week, the gaffe-a-minute vice president told a Pennsylvania crowd that high faculty salaries were one of the reasons tuition costs were skyrocketing.

And hell froze over.

A collective gasp, followed by murmurs of disbelief, could be heard among the ranks of Democratic-party-pocketing teacher’s unions across the country. Have they been betrayed by one of their most prominent pocketed pols? Any good Democrat should know there is no such thing as an overpaid educator. Logical impossibility.

New on Phi Beta Cons. . .


COMMENTS   4

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   01/16/12 15:49

Biden may be one of the stupidest politicians out there, but he does have one redeeming quality. Once in a while he will accidentally let the truth slip out. This is one of those cases.

Obama will never tell the truth. Never, why do you think he uses the teleprompter so much? Obama knows just like most conservatives know, that everything they do and say is a lie.

Comedians are really missing out on Biden. This guy just begs to be mocked. I know if he were a Republican, he would be the butt of many, many, many jokes. This guy makes it so easy, even easier then Clinton. But you hear crickets chirping rather then a Biden joke from Letterman or Leno (or just about everybody)........

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   01/16/12 18:08

First, let me say that universities should pay faculty as little as they can to get the quality of faculty they want. In fact, everyone should pay their employers as little as they can to get the quality of employee they want. It should be a market, right? Having said that, the number, and presumably the cost of administrators on college campuses pretty much tracks tuition. The number of faculty is pretty stable. What is the evidence that faculty are the boogeymen, and not administrators? (And this is a serious question.)

And cut STEM faculty salaries by, say, 20% and see how many competent ones you have left.

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   01/17/12 12:00

Yes and no. A good science/engineering/medical/health professions PhD can make potentially make much more in industry or government than in academia (I had a government offer 50% higher than the initial offer from my current school - the school came up to match it). In many liberal arts fields, however, the faculty member would be lucky to even find a job.

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   01/18/12 10:43

True, but this and many other articles in Phi Beta Cons don't distinguish between the two, and they should. In today's (Jan. 18) Phi Beta Cons, External Link  elaborates on my original point that the real problem with college cost is administrators.

And even if administrators weren't exploding in numbers and cost, it is their responsibility, even their main responsibility, to manage the the budget. Why blame the faculty for taking what is offered? Having said that, I also have no sympathy when, like UAW members, the faculty suffer the consequences of damaging the industry they work in.

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