I wouldn't have these bugs up my butt all the time if people in authority stopped shoving them up there

Context: I'm having some beers with two other guys. One of them is a surveyor of some kind, the other works in satellite communications. Neither has a college degree. Both of them make tons more money than I do. (The sat-com guy is shopping for a new car. He's trying to decide between a Lexus and a Porsche. I bought a new (to me) car this year - my choice was between an Accord and a Tercel.) At one point I told the surveyor guy that I was a College Professor, and he said to me somewhat condescendingly but with a hint of sympathy as well, "Oh, that's o.k., there's nothing wrong with that." So much for this fiction I was living under that my Ph.D brought me a modicum of social status.

Now, I'm not going to complain too loudly about how little I'm paid as a professor at a liberal arts college. My job pays ok, I think, and I'm compensated somewhat for the low pay (relative to what I could make elsewhere given my smarts and training) with flexibility and the fact that I, unlike many people in this cruel world, actually enjoy what I do for a living. I also know that there are plenty of people out there spreading tar on roofs in 100 degree heat who make a lot less than I do. But I'm going to complain a little bit, because I know there are a lot of people who do jobs that they enjoy and who have basically the same skill set that I have who make a lot more than I do. Teaching at a small liberal arts college may not pay much, but being president of a small liberal arts college, for example, can pay off quite handsomely.

Which of course brings me to the Op-Ed piece in this week's Washington Post, written by the president of my small liberal arts college. It concerns the decision of the Annapolis group not to participate in the U.S. News college rankings, and I agree with almost every word in it. Except for this passage, part of an analysis of why the rankings are not indicative of college quality:

And 7 percent of the formula is based on average faculty salaries, a metric that may affect student satisfaction negatively because of the high correlation between salary and research, according to Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, who has done extensive research on educational excellence. (Regrettably, high salaries are often associated with excellence in research rather than a commitment to teaching.)

And now the bugs in my butt start buzzing around like crazy. She seems to be saying that excellence in research (at liberal arts colleges) must come at the expense of teaching. But that's not what Gettysburg College's strategic plan says. It says (and it says this because a number of faculty members raised a stink when early drafts made almost no mention of research):

Faculty who are active scholars remain energized and up-to-date in their fields. To recruit the best faculty and to allow them to do their best work with Gettysburg students, we must provide an environment in which the teacher-scholar model can thrive, and in which service to the institution and its students is highly valued.

Teaching and scholarship, in other words, are complements. While it may be true that the focus on research at Ph.D-granting universities detracts from undergraduate instruction, liberal arts colleges are good at (or are supposed to be good at) striking a balance between the two that allows scholarship to enhance teaching rather than to siphon energy away from it. Does our president really believe that among liberal arts colleges, those that pay higher salaries tend to have worse teaching because of the time spent on research? That's preposterous. I happened to be at Swarthmore College this week, so this is the example that pops to mind. Swarthmore faculty teach fewer courses than those at Gettysburg and are on average more involved in scholarly activities. I am absolutely positive that students at Swarthmore get a better learning experience in their classes, on average, than those at Gettysburg. Why? Because Swarthmore's faculty are smarter, on average, than Gettysburg's. And why does Swarthmore get the smart faculty? Because they pay them more and give them more time to do research. In other words, I would argue, high pay is correlated not just with more time spent on research but also intelligence and other skills relative to teaching a good class. It's not at all unreasonable for U.S. News to include that in its ranking formula.

And am I just being paranoid if I suspect that this discussion of faculty salaries (of all the examples one might have come up with for why the US News rankings are silly) betrays a certain, shall we say, nonchalance about the College's failure in recent years to meet its own self-imposed targets for faculty pay? If the higher-ups at this college believe that low pay is correlated with good teaching, then we've got some serious problems.

One last thing. Faculty salaries are a bone of contention at all liberal arts colleges. I'd never thought about it before, but it gives me some solace to know that a college can boost its place in the US News rankings by increasing the salaries of its faculty, or at least that college administrators know that if they allow salaries to lag they may slip a few notches. A college's refusal to participate in the rankings, and the Annapolis group's movement to come up with a substitute formula, could take that pressure off. Maybe it's time for me to start looking for one of them surveyin' jobs.