

PhD Comics: Academic Salaries - gopalakrishnans
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1086

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jcl
To be fair, the numbers are not directly comparable. The football coach
salaries are only for division I teams, which most schools don't have; the
mean and median football coach salaries over all schools is probably much
lower, and the academic salaries at schools with division I teams may well be
higher than average.

In essence, this is comparing the average salary of the top 150 best-paid
football coaches to the average for all academics. It would be interesting to
see what the average of the top 150 academic salaries is.

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dangoldin
Not to mention the fact that many of the top 150 academics would have side
income as consultants, expert witnesses, etc.

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shawndrost
If you consider that, you have to consider the non-monetary benefits of being
a football coach, which are probably huge.

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biohacker42
Yep, that's the way it is.

Universities are only incidentally about knowledge and learning.

Please do not confuse the grant money draw that is research with either
teaching or learning. Clearly they are part of it but money is the main
driver.

Money is priority #1, that's why sports are so important.

Money is important to students as well, the bulk of the income their degree
will generate depends on the reputation of the school, _not_ on how much they
actually know.

And that's when they are first entering the job market. After that first job,
the only way college matters is through the relationships you built there.
Obviously relationships you build at work matter more and more over time.

And here again sports is important in creating that image of tribal success
that draws the people that you want to connect with, to make it far in life
after college.

That's the way life and college work.

If you don't like this harsh and cynical money based game, go to a school that
doesn't have a sports program and be a scholar. And if you do that, don't ever
think about money.

If you do find yourself thinking about money, especially more then is needed
to simply survive, then get an MBA... preferably from a school with a very
successful sports program.

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petercooper
That's true in the US, but sports has barely any importance at all in British
universities (and perhaps applies to the EU generally). Okay, we all know
about the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race, but beyond that, there's no public
exposure to university sports.

I think the focus on sports at US colleges says a lot about the US, rather
than universities or the education system in general.

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thomasmallen
The true injustice is how much money universities make on the backs of
athletes who don't earn a red cent. And the coach salaries demonstrate the
value of collegiate athletics, adding insult to real injuries.

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Alex3917
I don't understand this view that just because you're doing work you deserve
to get paid. Rowing was the first amateur sport in the United States, and if
you look back at the history of why Rowing when amateur in the late 1800s then
you see there are some very good reasons. The reason the NCAA is amateur is
because it creates a better experience for athletes. You don't have to worry
about people fixing the games, getting stabbed, being pressured to take
steroids, sports overshadowing schoolwork, etc. If athletes started earning a
salary then you'd see a lot of the best student-athletes give up sports
overnight. I certainly would have.

Furthermore, schools aren't making money on the backs of athletes, they're
raising money. That money doesn't get redistributed to shareholders, it gets
added to the endowment and spent on the university. If anything student-
athletes should get an income tax credit on their first X dollars earned after
college rather than a check, basically a modified form of the tax credit they
would get for any other charitable contribution.

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thomasmallen
That's a very naive perspective. Briefly,

* There is tremendous pressure to juice for any athlete who hopes to go pro or even be competitive.

* People gamble heavily on collegiate athletics. Of course you have to worry about fixed games.

* Look at USC, Miami, or just about any major sports school: The players barely have to attend class to remain eligible.

* No, they're making money. Take a look at the salaries of coaches, athletic directors, and college presidents and think again. If universities cared about endowments, they'd spend the athletic dollars on academics, investing in contributions from future alumni.

I highly recommend "What's My Name, Fool!", specifically the section on
collegiate athletics (page 230).

[http://books.google.com/books?id=ut3M85a6yTMC&dq=What%27...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ut3M85a6yTMC&dq=What%27s+my+name,+fool&pg=PP1&ots=qpDGt6hEac&source=bn&sig=kEjOQBDaMbUH6EG5Cm3BOBzo9LA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result)

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Alex3917
It seems to me that your view of the 380,000 U.S. student-athletes is heavily
skewed toward on the 200 people you see on TV. Creating policy based on this
view is the equivalent of designing child protection laws to benefit the one
missing white girl on CNN.

I'll check out the book though.

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fallentimes
College basketball + College baseball + College football = thousands of
players. Even though it might be a small percent of the total, it's still a
significant amount of people.

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Retric
And a free ride to a good school is the equivalent of a 50+k a year salary
without working the full year.

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fallentimes
True. But being a division 1 athlete is significantly more difficult than most
50k per year white collar jobs.

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alex_c
Sure, this seems unjust, mainly because none of us are professional football
coaches (I'm assuming).

But I'm not sure what point the comic is trying to make, really. If this
imbalance in pay pushed top academics to drop their career and switch to
coaching football, I could understand the argument that it's harmful. I highly
doubt that's the case.

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quantumhobbit
As an academic in training(phd student), I would never want to be a football
coach at a top school. The hours they have to work to remain competitive are
insane. One bad season or embarrassing loss to a rival and you will be fired.
I'll take the promise of tenure over the extra pay. Also as previous posts
have stated the imbalance in pay is skewed by comparing top coaches with all
academics. I'm pretty sure coaches at a Div III school are not paid in 7
figures, probably not even 6 figures.

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mattmaroon
I don't think I would take the promise of tenure over a job that pays me 12x
the salary. Even most Div 1 coaches last more than 3 years.

Also, it's far better to make $3 million in 3 years than it is to do so in 30.

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llimllib
where's the companion graph of how much money each of those people bring in to
the university?

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mechanical_fish
Excellent point. While you're at it, make sure to include the salaries of the
players.

Or are we applying corporate-compensation logic, in which all the money that a
company brings in is credited to the CEO, who promptly gives himself a lavish
raise?

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steveplace
It's my opinion that college football players should receive salary, or at
least be able to accept endorsement opportunities. There would be a decreased
financial motivation to leave school early.

There's a ton of downside to this, I know, but I don't think that universities
should be regulating what sort of money their students bring in.

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streblo
They receive salary in the form of a scholarship.

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cconstantine
Thank you.

Another way to look at it is that the university is 'paying' them with a free
education, and 4 years with no financial obligations. Depending on the school,
that has the potential for massive financial equivalents.

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mechanical_fish
I agree that a scholarship has a nonzero value.

That said, let me propose a deal for you: Instead of being paid for your next
four years of work, your employer gives the cash to a university. In return,
the university gives you a four-year scholarship with a value equal to your
deferred salary plus X%. Note that the scholarship is nontransferable, it
cannot be deferred, and you cannot stretch it out over more than four years,
unless the university agrees to give you a single extra "red-shirt" year.
Also, if you quit your job, you lose the scholarship, so don't expect to be a
full-time student unless you're _really_ good at multitasking and don't need a
lot of sleep.

How large does X have to be before you accept this offer? My guess is that it
is considerably higher than zero.

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cconstantine
Right, I think we're both in agreement here. To say that college athletes are
unpaid workers isn't exactly true, but it also isn't entirely honest to say
they're paid like a regular job. I responded to the parent of my post because
it had been down-modded for simply saying scholarships are a form of payment.

If I were a high-school kid coming from a family with very little ability to
help pay for college I'd say that sounds like fantastic deal.

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yters
It's crazy how fanatic people are about sports. I know in Europe there are
gangs that kill each other based on what soccer team they support. Is this
just because we can't go out and make war on the neigboring village anymore?

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cabalamat
For the benefit of non-American people like me, can someone explain what this
thing with athletic scholarships in US universities is all about? To me it
just seems silly, like a sports team having academic scholarships would be.

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arockwell
Particularly with football, the players would not be able to afford to go to
college without a scholarship, nor get into college without receiving some
preferential treatment.

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eru
That does not answer the question. You could just pick poor bright kids to
give scholarships to, instead of athletic kids.

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arockwell
I'm sorry, I think I might be misunderstanding you, so I'll try to elaborate
some. Each athletic program has a certain number of scholarships they give
out. In the case of football, these scholarships are awarded almost entirely
without regard to the academic quality of the athlete. How true that last
statement is varies greatly from school to school, but in general, they only
need to meet some pretty minimum requirements. If your question is _why_ do
schools do this its because football brings in a LOT of money.

The same thing happens to a lesser extent with basketball, but for the most
part other athletes of other sports have to earn there way in to school like
everyone else.

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cabalamat
So the universities do it because it's a money-making proposition?

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arockwell
Yes, college football is insanely popular. I live in a county of 200k people
that has absolutely no trouble filling up a stadium of 90k people for home
games. The skyboxes sell in the millions, and the best seats in the stands
require a 10k/year donation for the right to purchase them. TV deals are also
very lucrative, and I would assume so is merchandise.

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brentr
This sounds a lot like what I experienced at the University of Florida.

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arockwell
This is not a coincidence :P

I don't think UF is really very different than a lot of the other major
football schools. Most of them are in pretty moderately sized cities,
especially in comparison to cities with professional teams. Green Bay is the
only NFL city that's college town sized.

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brentr
What's your major?

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mattmaroon
I once read that the highest paid employee of 20 some states is a college
football coach. I know it's true in good old Ohio.

