It shouldnt work like this...

[silkworm]

Hey, more communists, come on board.

 

It gets more offensive when you look at how much "musicians," actors, and other "artists" make when compared to the actual work they do compared to athletes.

 

The problem isn't society in the case though, not really, it's money and the math behind it. These people make that much money because they have millions of people willing to pay the littlest bit to watch them do what they do. And regularly. Essentially, they make it because they earn it. That is really what they're worth in this world of money over merit.

 

Professors make so little because they only have a few people to pay them a moderate amount of money to watch them do what they do, and it's normally a one time gig.

 

Two possible remedies:

1. People begin valuing knowledge over getting fat comfortably and there becomes superstar professors that teach mass audiences or

2. If we stopped believing in money, it would no longer exist, and we wouldn't have this problem.

 

And as a side note, some professors are worth far less.

[In My Memory]

Silkworm,

The problem isn't society in the case though' date=' not really, it's money and the math behind it. These people make that much money because they have millions of people willing to pay the littlest bit to watch them do what they do. And regularly. Essentially, they make it because they earn it. That is really what they're worth in this world of money over merit.

 

Professors make so little because they only have a few people to pay them a moderate amount of money to watch them do what they do, and it's normally a one time gig.[/quote']

Does the math really work out like that? I could probably sit down with MSExcel and figure out some numbers, but just a few ordinary facts:

 

- More people spend money on college than spend money on sports merchandise

- A single person who goes to college spends more than a single person dedicated to a sports team

 

I dont think many Steelers fans spend US$20,000 on their team in four years, or even in their lifetime cheering for a team? Now how many college students do you think spend US$20,000 in four years? Probably a lot of them.

 

Its probably also fair to say in a single month a university will earn more money for its continued operation than the continued operation of a football stadium earns in a month.

 

At the very least, its possible to say there are more professors than sports athletes, but I dont really know if its true that the salary per professor or per athlete is actually equal to net revenue / athelete or professor. For instance, I've been in classes where I'm one of 15 other people and one of an auditorium of 200, and both professors were paid the same amount (or the professor in the auditorium could have conceivably been paid less because they are more expendable). And sports teams who win the Superbowl will be paid more than the worst team in the NFL, even if the Superbowl winning team has fewer fans overall than the worst team.

[Jim]

Hey' date=' more communists, come on board.

 

It gets more offensive when you look at how much "musicians," actors, and other "artists" make when compared to the actual work they do compared to athletes.

 

The problem isn't society in the case though, not really, it's money and the math behind it. These people make that much money because they have millions of people willing to pay the littlest bit to watch them do what they do. And regularly. Essentially, they make it because they earn it. That is really what they're worth in this world of money over merit.

 

Professors make so little because they only have a few people to pay them a moderate amount of money to watch them do what they do, and it's normally a one time gig.

 

Two possible remedies:

1. People begin valuing knowledge over getting fat comfortably and there becomes superstar professors that teach mass audiences or

2. If we stopped believing in money, it would no longer exist, and we wouldn't have this problem.

 

And as a side note, some professors are worth far less.[/quote']

 

 

1. There were and are professors who teach mass audiences and make big bucks- Sagan, Hawkings, Greene to name the first that leap to mind.

 

2. I still don't see the problem. It's only money.

[Jim]

Silkworm' date='

 

Does the math really work out like that? I could probably sit down with MSExcel and figure out some numbers, but just a few ordinary facts:

 

- More people spend money on college than spend money on sports merchandise

- A single person who goes to college spends more than a single person dedicated to a sports team

 

I dont think many Steelers fans spend US$20,000 on their team in four years, or even in their lifetime cheering for a team? Now how many college students do you think spend US$20,000 in four years? Probably a lot of them.

 

Its probably also fair to say in a single month a university will earn more money for its continued operation than the continued operation of a football stadium earns in a month.

 

At the very least, its possible to say there are more professors than sports athletes, but I dont really know if its true that the salary per professor or per athlete is actually equal to net revenue / athelete or professor. For instance, I've been in classes where I'm one of 15 other people and one of an auditorium of 200, and both professors were paid the same amount (or the professor in the auditorium could have conceivably been paid less because they are more expendable). And sports teams who win the Superbowl will be paid more than the worst team in the NFL, even if the Superbowl winning team has fewer fans overall than the worst team.[/quote']

 

The Packers are the only NFL team that releases its financial statements every year. They earned gross revenues for the fiscal year ending 3/31/05 of $200 million. After all expenses, including player salaries, the packers earned $24.5 million. http://www.nfl.com/teams/story/GB/8681642

 

The NFL has a salary cap that keeps player salaries at 56-64% of the league's revenues. http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2003/0915/081tab.html For example, for the 2001 season the salary cap was 63% of the leagues' "defined gross revenues." http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question644.htm

 

In other words, player compensation is tied directly to the revenues they generate and, by all accounts, owners are still making a lot of dough. Even the non-profit Packers are doing well.

 

In any event, I really don't care if the players get 63 or even 93% of the league's gross revenues. I'm not sure why I should lose sleep over the owners. If players take too much of a cut, the business becomes untenable, the league will close and then those that don't like professional sports should be happy.

[Glider]

2. I still don't see the problem. It's only money.

The problem comes when you don't have any.

 

To get back to the original principle of the post, who would we rather have to hand when we are injured or sick (and sooner or later, we WILL need that kind of help), a nurse or David arsing Beckham?

 

What about when our kids need someone to stop them growing up stupid? one of the LA Raiders or a teacher?

 

What if our houses burn down? Would we prefer a steeler or a firefighter?

 

Certainly people want entertainment, but people need health care workers, teachers, firefighters etc..

 

As has been said, these sporting 'heroes' are the best of the best. Why then is it becoming acceptable to recruit the dross to do the jobs that people need done because, for the salary, that's all we're going to attract?

 

Do we really want your kids taught by somebody who is only a teacher because they couldn't make it in sports, show biz or the private sector? Is that who we want dishing out meaningless degrees to our kids, or standing at the end of our bed tyring to work out what's killing us? If we are prepared to pay for the best of the best to play games for us, why don't we want the best of the best looking after us and teaching our kids and saving our lives?

 

How many can see the irony in rewarding the purile so richly and then bitching about shortfalls in nurse recruitment or teaching standards?

[Severian]

On the whole academics are a bit too willing to compromise I think. For example, last year in the UK we went on strike. We walked out for one day, which we publicised well in advance and then rerganised our lectures on that day to other days so that the students wouldn't miss out. We rescheduled meetings, so that important academic decisions wouldn't be sidelined, and then we went home for the day, and logged on remotely to make sure that our research didn't suffer.

 

No-one noticed. It didn't even make the TV news.

 

What we should have done was to go on strike for the 2 week graduate exam period. No-one would have been able to graduate and everyone would have had to resit. Imagine a mother's outrage when little Johnny's career plans are set back for a year? But it might have got the politicains to sit up and take notice!

[pcs]

On the other hand, in the United States at least, public employee unions aooear to take it up the rear whenever they try something bound to upset a public dependent on their services. MTA and the air traffic controllers are two of the more striking (no pun intended) examples.

[JohnB]

On the whole academics are a bit too willing to compromise I think. For example, last year in the UK we went on strike. We walked out for one day, which we publicised well in advance and then rerganised our lectures on that day to other days so that the students wouldn't miss out. We rescheduled meetings, so that important academic decisions wouldn't be sidelined, and then we went home for the day, and logged on remotely to make sure that our research didn't suffer.

Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear. Go on, admit it. Militant Unionism isn't your strong suit is it?

What we should have done was to go on strike for the 2 week graduate exam period. No-one would have been able to graduate and everyone would have had to resit.

You're learning. The other option is to threaten to go on strike during the exam period.

[Glider]

Well, NATFHE has just voted for strike action on the 7th March. I will probably go out, but I'm not comfortable with the logic. It's the same as hostage situations: "accede to our dermands or the innocent will suffer".

 

It is for this reason reason that nurses have never gone on strike (because the patients would be the ones to suffer, not the Chief execs.). When nurses held pickets, they had done their shift, gone home for a shower and then come back to picket on their own time. This is also the reason that nurses are screwed year after year.

 

I see no justification for University Vice-Chancellors to have awarded themselves an average 25% increase over the last four years, whilst failing to make any offer whatsoever to the lecturers, despite having promised the government that 30% of the increase in HE funding gained from the introduction of tuition fees would go to improvements in lecturer's pay and conditions.

 

Even so, I can't help feeling that the students are already paying enough. Why should they also be expected to take the brunt of our dissatisfaction with the hypocricy of Vice-Chancellors?

 

I'm afraid that militant unionism isn't my forte either, when it involves holding the innocent to ransom. However, I'd be in favour of getting hold of the Vice-Chancellors and tarring and feathering the bastards. Why should these lying hypocrites get away with using students as a human shield?

[silkworm]

Time warp.

[silkworm]

Does the math really work out like that? I could probably sit down with MSExcel and figure out some numbers' date=' but just a few ordinary facts:

 

- More people spend money on college than spend money on sports merchandise

- A single person who goes to college spends more than a single person dedicated to a sports team[/quote']

 

Please read my post if you're going to respond to it.

 

Here's a quick example. We'll say that the average university campus has 20,000 students. They spend $5,500 a year (at public universities). That's $110,000,000, and that money must pay for everything at the university, which I'm sure the operating costs are astounding. Universities have a lot of support staff and a lot of different programs so that money gets split up very thoroughly, and no college professor is going to teach 20,000 all of their hours every year. If he did, he'd be rich.

 

If you're implying that administrators should be kicked out to the street, I'm with you. What good are they?

 

Well, Arrowhead Stadium holds almost 80,000 people. They have an average ticket price of $67.00. The Chiefs have sold out every game for a few decades so that's approx. $5.4 million per game, not including beer sales, merchandise at Arrowhead, etc.. They have 8 home games and that amounts to $42.9 million per season not considering playoffs. So, while that number is incredibly small compared to it's actualy worth, let's keep it in mind. Now there are the TV contracts. $712.5 m/year from Fox, $622.5 m/yr from CBS... A LOT of money, and it's because millions of people watch football. So, splitting up that money, the NFL gives each team $73.3 million. That amounts to $116.2 million for the Chiefs per year, guaranteed. Well, not considering the support staff, the minimum wage workers, but we will consider the five practice squad players and I'll throw in two roster spots for the coaches bringing the Chiefs roster to 60. So, without considering a lot of revenue, it appears that anyone an NFL roster is worth $1.93 million. Looks to me like the players are getting screwed. It doesn't cost anywhere near as much to operate and NFL team versus a public university (not considering the player's salaries of course).

 

I agree with what you're saying in principle, and the only thing I personally despise more than money is religion. But the simple fact is, if you don't want these people to make this money, stop paying them. Make sure you never have an NFL game on. Never wear an NFL t-shirt, a hat. Never buy a kid a football card, a cereal box with any logos on it, anything like that. I'm sure if you really thought about it, you'd see you're part of the problem.

 

I've never seen a cereal box with a college professor or even a Nobel Prize winner on it. Not because Nobel Prize winners don't deserve the endorsement deal, it's just because no one is interested in them. Those who don't pay attention in college far outnumber those who do.

 

2. I still don't see the problem. It's only money.

 

Thanks for mentioning Sagan and Hawking, but as you can see they are far from the norm. I suppose you could also throw in Bill Nye. I wonder how much Hawking makes a year?

 

Being that I have my priorities straight and that I live in the universe and not the NFL, I'd rather more of that sort of money being thrown at science, education, and healthcare. I mean, I see the cause, but it's a shame. Fictional or not, money is what we use to symbollically respresent resource allocation, someone's worth really.

[Jim]

Thanks for mentioning Sagan and Hawking' date=' but as you can see they are far from the norm. I suppose you could also throw in Bill Nye. I wonder how much Hawking makes a year?

[/quote']

 

Multimillonare athletes are likewise far from the norm. Like Hawkings, Sagan, Greene, the late Shelby Foote and others, academics can make money if they provide something wanted by the masses. Others make good money by providing curricula or software to be used by other educators.

[Jim]

The problem comes when you don't have any.

 

No one is talking about paying educators nothing or advocating that they shouldn't be paid more. As I said up front, my wife is a speech-language pathologist in the public schools and I think is woefully underpaid.

 

The issue being discussed is the disparity between educators and the gazillionare athletes in our society. I'm sure we all realize that we simply can't pay each educator $2MM/year; therefore, it is beside the point to compare educators' salaries to professional athletes, fast food tycoons or the latest winner of the lottery.

 

A more apt comparison is to other professionals. One thing that would help is for teachers to demand to be treated like professionals. I wonder why, for example, teachers do not display their diplomas in their classrooms. I have about 6 framed diplomas in my office, some of which are really fluff but are meant to communicate to clients that I am for real. Why don't teachers in grades k-12 display their diplomas and other professional certificates?

 

I'm all for paying educators more but the money isn't going to come from Kobe Bryant. It's going to come from you and me. If you want to pay high school teachers $80k/year and college professors $150k/year, be prepared to give up real money from your salary. How much would you pay today to pay educators, firefighters, etc. what they are worth? 5k? 10k?

[ecoli]

A more apt comparison is to other professionals. One thing that would help is for teachers to demand to be treated like professionals. I wonder why, for example, teachers do not display their diplomas in their classrooms. I have about 6 framed diplomas in my office, some of which are really fluff but are meant to communicate to clients that I am for real. Why don't teachers in grades k-12 display their diplomas and other professional certificates?

 

What kid is going to care where their teacher went to school?

[Phi for All]

After reading what's been written, I feel the need to clarify my position. While I personally have gotten over my obsession with sports, I don't feel everyone else should as well. I objected to the way many sports figures conducted their professional (and due to the celebrity they enjoy, their personal) lives because I felt it shows a bad example to those who idolize them and their lifestyles. I also felt that when sports starts to cost tax dollars to those who don't support them it's gotten out of hand.

 

But I dealt with it by simply walking away from it, and I don't think sports should be abolished or imposed upon. It's a business and if you don't agree with a business you simply don't support it. You protest when tax dollars are used instead of bond funds. If enough people feel the same way the market and the political system will take care of it.

 

I take special pains to point out to my daughter that celebrity millionaires are vastly outnumbered by hard-working people who become millionaires so they never have to worry about money, not to buy a room full of shoes or cars that cost more than our house. I feel it's important for her to see that becoming a star is not a golden path to the easy life and that having money is not the end of all troubles.

 

The second focus of this thread is really a different issue, that of education spending. My state is ranked 49th out of 50 in spending for education but the slack is picked up by the parents. I hate that my child has to be involved in fundraising efforts that often make the fundraising company more money than the schools. It saddens me that more people vote to keep their taxes low than to fund educational needs. I can't help but feel it's the ones without school age kids who vote the funding down and then complain about how many juvenile delinquents there are running around.

[Jim]

What kid is going to care where their teacher went to school?

 

Kids aren't the only ones that go into classrooms. I'm talking about projecting the fact teachers are a professionals deserving of professional wages. Why not?

[Phi for All]

Kids aren't the only ones that go into classrooms. I'm talking about projecting the fact teachers are a professionals deserving of professional wages. Why not?

Practical reasons. The junior and senior high school classrooms are used by multiple teachers and are not as secure as your office. Would you want your diplomas hanging in a room where a thousand people have access every day without you being there?

 

I agree with you in principal, though. Teachers are professionals too.

[Jim]

Practical reasons. The junior and senior high school classrooms are used by multiple teachers and are not as secure as your office. Would you want your diplomas hanging in a room where a thousand people have access every day without you being there?

 

I agree with you in principal' date=' though. Teachers are professionals too.[/quote']

 

There are cases where it is impractical and there are cases where it is not. Many times a teacher does have a home room yet the diploma is rarely, if ever, on the wall. I got the idea from a seminar my wife went to for SLPs and they made the point that they should hang up the diplomas. My wife has a masters in a very difficult subject matter, I dare say as difficult as an MBA, yet very few in her profession hang up the diplomas even though they typically have their own office.

 

There are some practical issues but there is also a mindset even among teachers that this illustrates.

[silkworm]

Multimillonare athletes are likewise far from the norm. Like Hawkings, Sagan, Greene, the late Shelby Foote and others, academics can make money if they provide something wanted by the masses. Others make good money by providing curricula or software to be used by other educators.

 

True, multimillion dollar athletes are far from the norm, as well as a professional athlete in general. But you have to admit that the number of multimilliondollar athletes far exceeds the number of multimillion dollar professors and scientists, both now and historically.

 

The problem lies in the priorities of the masses and the fictional value of money.

[pcs]

True, multimillion dollar athletes are far from the norm, as well as a professional athlete in general. But you have to admit that the number of multimilliondollar athletes far exceeds the number of multimillion dollar professors and scientists, both now and historically.

 

I don't know about that. Are we discounting scientists and professors who've made their fortunes in industry? Isn't this like comparing high school coaches to their NBA counterparts?

[silkworm]

I'm saying that if you made a list of professional athletes who have made $1 million in one year, which is a fairly recent phenomenon, versus a list of scientists who have made $1 million in one year then the list of athletes would be much longer than the list of scientists. And it's furthermore guaranteed that most of these scientists did not make this money by virtue of the fact that they were awesome scientists, but because they sold a product that was a result of their research.

 

The original discussion on this thread was concerning the salary of scientists and professors versus professional athletes, "musicians", "actors", and other realitively worthless people in the real world.

[Sisyphus]

I'm not sure what there is to discuss. Professional athletes' and actors' salaries are driven by supply and demand, like anything else in the private sector. You can reflect on the silliness and decadence of our society in which these people make millions of dollars a year, and that would be fair. I agree. But if you're looking to complain or to debate, I think you're out of luck. It's no one person's decision; it's just market forces. There is no person who can decide that they should be paid less and have that mean anything. Now, whether teachers should be paid more, that's an entirely separate issue, and one for which decisions can be made, because they are public employees. Is that what we want to talk about?

[Jim]

I'm saying that if you made a list of professional athletes who have made $1 million in one year' date=' which is a fairly recent phenomenon, versus a list of scientists who have made $1 million in one year then the list of athletes would be much longer than the list of scientists. And it's furthermore guaranteed that most of these scientists did not make this money by virtue of the fact that they were awesome scientists, but because they sold a product that was a result of their research.

 

The original discussion on this thread was concerning the salary of scientists and professors versus professional athletes, "musicians", "actors", and other realitively worthless people in the real world.[/quote']

 

I agree with PCS. I'm not so sure there aren't more millionare scientists of all types who acquired their wealth by doing excellent science. There is some element of being in the right place at the right time with both classes. Does a high school coach put a kid in the right position to flourish? Does he have access to the facilities to train for the sport? Does he stay uninjured?

 

It is usually the confluence of both talent, hard work and opportunity/luck that produces a huge success of either variety.

[Jim]

True' date=' multimillion dollar athletes are far from the norm, as well as a professional athlete in general. But you have to admit that the number of multimilliondollar athletes far exceeds the number of multimillion dollar professors and scientists, both now and historically.

 

The problem lies in the priorities of the masses and the fictional value of money.[/quote']

 

There certainly aren't more highly paid athletes than there are highly paid writers. I'm not certain how much money the authors of non-fiction books make on average or how many of these authors are professors (or why that would really matter). There are a lot of literate types making a lot of money writing good books.

 

My youngest boy devours Harry Potter which I think teaches him several things, not the least of which being the joy of reading. If you include such fictional teachers, I'm not sure I agree at all.

[Jim]

Now, whether teachers should be paid more, that's an entirely separate issue, and one for which decisions can[/i'] be made, because they are public employees. Is that what we want to talk about?

 

I've not heard anyone disagree that teachers shouldn't, as a general matter, get more more pay. That seems to be a nonissue.