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NEWLY HIRED PROFESSORS PAID MORE IN ARMENIA THAN CHINA BUT LESS THAN ETHIOPIA
epress.am
04.03.2012
How much is a professor worth? It might help to know what professors
are actually paid and how that figure compares with other salaries -
and with the salaries of academics in other countries. But as Philip
Altbach and his colleagues at the Center for International Higher
Education discovered, such questions are a lot easier to ask than to
answer, The New York Times reports.
In a new book, "Paying the Professoriate," to be published this month,
Altbach and his co-editors examine academic salaries, contracts and
benefits in publicly funded universities in 28 countries. They depict
a world increasingly divided "into two categories - brain drain and
brain gain," as countries with more resources siphon off academic
talent from poorer countries. They also show a profession that in
many countries is subject to a widening gap between professors at top
research universities and those who work at colleges devoted mainly
to teaching, "who are lower in the academic pecking order and who
now constitute the large majority of the academic work force."
All currencies were converted into US dollars using a purchasing power
parity index based on the cost of a set of items in the United States.
But they also compared salaries in each country with that country's
average per capita gross domestic product, giving a sense of how
academics were paid in comparison to pay for compatriots in other
jobs. Finally each of the 28 country teams was asked whether the
average academic salary for that country was "sufficient to support
a middle-class standard of living."
In terms of purchasing power, newly hired academics in China ($259 per
month, as calculated by this particular study's index) were the worst
off, paid less than colleagues in Armenia ($405) or Ethiopia ($864).
Academics in Canada, where the entry level salaries averaged $5,733,
and full professors were paid an average of $9,485, had more cause
for celebration than in the United States, where newly hired faculty
members averaged $4,950 and full professors $7,358 - a figure that
put the United States behind Italy ($9,118), South Africa ($9,330),
Saudi Arabia ($8,524), Britain ($8,369), Malaysia ($7,864), Australia
($7,499), and India ($7,433).
"Just finding the data proved difficult," Altbach said in an
interview. "Many countries track school teachers' salaries, but
not academic pay. And among academics, salary remains such a taboo
subject." A preliminary report in 2003 recruited researchers from a
dozen countries but "we found two problems."
"None of us were economists, so we didn't really know how to make
sense of the data. And the data we got was pretty bad," Altbach said.
However, that first effort caught the interest of Maria Yudkevitch
and Gregory Androushchak at the National Research University Higher
School of Economics in Moscow. "Leaving aside social science, the
Soviets had a really excellent university system - which has largely
been destroyed," Altbach said.
"We wanted to get an international perspective," said Androushchak,
one of the book's co-editors. Although Soviet science had put the first
man in space, and Russians continue to be awarded Nobel prizes - and to
launch rockets - the country's academic institutions consistently fare
poorly in international rankings. "We wanted to know what developed
countries paid their academics, as well as developing countries
and the other BRICS," he said, referring to the emerging economies,
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
"Paying the Professoriate" brings together government statistics
from countries where the information is available with survey data
from those where it is not. Private universities were excluded,
since most do not publish salary data.
From: A. Papazian
epress.am
04.03.2012
How much is a professor worth? It might help to know what professors
are actually paid and how that figure compares with other salaries -
and with the salaries of academics in other countries. But as Philip
Altbach and his colleagues at the Center for International Higher
Education discovered, such questions are a lot easier to ask than to
answer, The New York Times reports.
In a new book, "Paying the Professoriate," to be published this month,
Altbach and his co-editors examine academic salaries, contracts and
benefits in publicly funded universities in 28 countries. They depict
a world increasingly divided "into two categories - brain drain and
brain gain," as countries with more resources siphon off academic
talent from poorer countries. They also show a profession that in
many countries is subject to a widening gap between professors at top
research universities and those who work at colleges devoted mainly
to teaching, "who are lower in the academic pecking order and who
now constitute the large majority of the academic work force."
All currencies were converted into US dollars using a purchasing power
parity index based on the cost of a set of items in the United States.
But they also compared salaries in each country with that country's
average per capita gross domestic product, giving a sense of how
academics were paid in comparison to pay for compatriots in other
jobs. Finally each of the 28 country teams was asked whether the
average academic salary for that country was "sufficient to support
a middle-class standard of living."
In terms of purchasing power, newly hired academics in China ($259 per
month, as calculated by this particular study's index) were the worst
off, paid less than colleagues in Armenia ($405) or Ethiopia ($864).
Academics in Canada, where the entry level salaries averaged $5,733,
and full professors were paid an average of $9,485, had more cause
for celebration than in the United States, where newly hired faculty
members averaged $4,950 and full professors $7,358 - a figure that
put the United States behind Italy ($9,118), South Africa ($9,330),
Saudi Arabia ($8,524), Britain ($8,369), Malaysia ($7,864), Australia
($7,499), and India ($7,433).
"Just finding the data proved difficult," Altbach said in an
interview. "Many countries track school teachers' salaries, but
not academic pay. And among academics, salary remains such a taboo
subject." A preliminary report in 2003 recruited researchers from a
dozen countries but "we found two problems."
"None of us were economists, so we didn't really know how to make
sense of the data. And the data we got was pretty bad," Altbach said.
However, that first effort caught the interest of Maria Yudkevitch
and Gregory Androushchak at the National Research University Higher
School of Economics in Moscow. "Leaving aside social science, the
Soviets had a really excellent university system - which has largely
been destroyed," Altbach said.
"We wanted to get an international perspective," said Androushchak,
one of the book's co-editors. Although Soviet science had put the first
man in space, and Russians continue to be awarded Nobel prizes - and to
launch rockets - the country's academic institutions consistently fare
poorly in international rankings. "We wanted to know what developed
countries paid their academics, as well as developing countries
and the other BRICS," he said, referring to the emerging economies,
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
"Paying the Professoriate" brings together government statistics
from countries where the information is available with survey data
from those where it is not. Private universities were excluded,
since most do not publish salary data.
From: A. Papazian