Professor vs. Frycook

“The high cost of college makes people think that most faculty are overpaid. Let me debunk this myth...My total gross: $621,652. That’s it—25 years in universities, including nine part-time jobs. Annual average gross income: $24,866. McDonald’s suggests that employees find a second job. Since I did not take that into account, we should not count my income from jobs that were outside of universities. If so, my academic earnings were $609,413. Compare that with $581,450 at McDonald’s. Predictably, I earned more as a professor than I might have made as an employee at McDonald’s. What is really surprising is that it took me 25 years to do so.
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Alberto A. Martinez, "Who Earns More: Professor vs. Frycook," - http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/?p=6283