John Ziker was quoted in an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Don’t Professors Make More Money? The Flexibility They Enjoy, a Study Argues.”
In the piece, economist Daniel S. Hamermesh, a professor of economics at Barnard College, found that professors earn about 15 percent less compared with their equally educated peers when controlling for outside factors, on average, but that five of those percentage points could be written off as the flexible scheduling of academia.
However, Ziker challenges some of the assumptions Hamermesh makes. From the article: “He too agrees that faculty members have flexibility in when they work, but he argues the pay disparity pointed out by Mr. Hamermesh could be attributed to how the public values higher education.
Much of academic work, he said, is invisible to the public, and it’s a common misperception that professors have plenty of leisure time. In his earlier study, he found professors worked about 60 hours a week.”