Reply #66: OK. here's the situation where I am.

[QC]

Out of about 400 full-time employees at my institution, only about 80 teach.

Of the 100 highest paid people at the institution, only 23 are full-time classroom teachers. The others are bureaucratic functionaries of some sort.

Sounds like a lot of overhead to me, as well as a maldistribution of funding.

The figures in the graph above are for R1 research institutions (think major universities). Most college professors are in smaller two and four-year institutions and are making about half what the people in the graph are. It's like pointing to Wall Street salaries to argue that the tellers down at the local bank are paid well.