Canadian Politics Today

So are you just going to decide what the humanities are worth? Should we not pay historians as much either? For the record, English professors are paid less than business and STEM professors for the most part and especially law professors. But the problem that I'm describing is across the board.

Again, you believe these people make too much money, when I can tell you that a pre-tenured professor in an Arts Faculty just starting out makes between $60,000-70,000 per year at many universities in this country. Are you really going to tell me that this is too much money for someone who has three separate degrees, one of which they contributed new knowledge to their discipline through a doctoral dissertation, a teaching portfolio at the university level, as well as several peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations?

It depends....

The average salary in Canada is roughly $50k. And 10 years ago, the average salary with someone with a higher than a bachelors was around $73k in Ottawa (higher than in some of the smaller cities.)If a new college professor in the arts is starting out with a salary of $60-70k, then their starting salary is already near the average salary of people with similar education (and already above the average salary for the rest of us). Furthermore, that college professor will likely have more job security and benefits than others in non-academic careers (even if they don't have tenure, they are still in a more stable position than someone working in business.)

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labor51b-eng.htm
http://yackler.ca/blog/2016/04/06/much-canadian-jobs-pay-average-salaries-region-industry/

On top of this, they're required to do service for the academy, which includes sitting on boards, mentoring graduate students, peer-reviewing research, and communicating not only the results of their research but the most up to date research in their field. Almost every professor I know works from the time they get up, until they go to bed at night with all the responsibilities they have.

I taught college for a few years (in the computer field). No research, but I did have to participate in things like sitting on boards, doing student reviews with other professors, etc.

Yes, there were times of the year when there was a lot of pressure (requiring long hours, extra work, etc.; during exams, when first preparing course material) But there were other times of the year when things were a lot easier (and I was basically spending half the time I would have otherwise... first few weeks of teaching a course I had done before and already taught before, between exams, etc.) The thing to say about the work load is that it was inconsistent... sometimes higher than average, sometimes lower. Simply pointing to the highest amount of work (i.e. "look at the overtime they have to put in at exam time") gives just as flawed view of the work as someone who says "look at all the time they have off".

So do profs make too much? Probably not.

I guess the big question to ask is... how much would that professor be making in other (non-academic) fields? If someone is in computers or engineering, they could probably command a high salary in the private sector. Their pay as a college professor would need to be higher to lure them away from the business world. If someone is a professor in art, or english? Their private sector options are a lot more limited.

I think there's also a tendency to judge the value of professors based on what their area of expertise contributes to society. Someone in engineering/computers/medicine? Well, we all live in buildings that we'd rather not have collapse on us, and take medicine that we hope can cure us. We can easily see how it impacts us on a day to day basis.  Some humanities (like history or economics) may not seem as critical but we can still see some value in it. (i.e. we'd like to prevent the economy from collapsing.) On the other hand something like art or english? Most people just don't see much value in some English or Art professor writing a paper on some archane topic that will never impact anyone's lives.