Michigan Spends A Lot On Professors

I was meaning to get to this earlier today but Economix has a list of the top ten private, public, and liberal arts schools average full-time professor salaries and Michigan is fourth behind Berkeley (of course. Wah.) and before North Carolina (woot! Take that Tar-Heels!). But keep one thing in mind: the University may not be spending its money wisely. One of the most popular professors is paid well below the average here. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Now, that’s not entirely fair. Plenty of my favorite professors are paid more than a fair salary and one also has to consider for, say, Business School professors, they have to be paid a lot because otherwise they could just leave their job and go join Bain Capital or the Caryle Group instead. At the same time though, there are plenty of good professors out there you could get relatively cheaply and instead use that money on the professors that make the university exceptional. It seems to be more a question of what kind of university Michigan wants to be.

–Daniel Strauss