Wednesday, August 24, 2005

That'll buy a lot of Doritos

Economist Extraordinaire Brad DeLong illuminates us as to how valued music professors are:
Division of Labour: Academic productivity: From the Aug. 20, 1905 NYT is a report that Dr. Fred Wolle accepted the position of Chair of the Department of Music at California Berkley for $5000 per year.
According to Historical Economic Services:
In 2003, $5,000.00 from 1905 is worth:
$103,803.77 using the Consumer Price Index...
$479,058.79 using the unskilled wage
$605,051.85 using the GDP per capita
[...]
A century ago college teachers were upper class. Now we are upper middle class (or middle class).



I'm at the lower end of salaries at my university, being a lowly, untenured assistant professor. Therefore I'm decidedly middle class, not even close to upper middle class yet. Of course, I went into music for the money (and the chicks).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've heard about those chicks in the music business!

Scott said...

You never warned me to watch out for the ones that decide to become priests.

Anonymous said...

But once women hear you have a degree in Chemical Engineering, they can't keep their hands off of you.

Scott said...

I'm sure Mass Transfer Phenomena makes for great pillow talk.