> The average for a full professor is far closer to $91,935 because the vast majority of faculty/instructors in the US work at non-Ph.D. granting institutions.
Okay, fair point. But schools that don't grant a doctoral degree are also the cheapest institutions (elite liberal arts colleges aside)--the ones where students aren't taking out huge student loan debt to attend. So those aren't really the target of my ire.
> It is a bigger concern because it's needless waste.
You're fixated on some people getting rich when the real problem is that we spend $500 billion a year on giving kids higher education that very few of them actually need. That's the big waste.
If we cut our higher-education spending by 1/3, we could cut a $10,000 check each year to every single kid in poverty. If we cut it by 2/3, we could additionally pay for health insurance for every uninsured American.
We're forgoing game changing improvements in quality of life so that a bunch of 18-22 year olds can waste time learning things they'll forget the minute they graduate.
> We could slash instructors/professor's wages if we want to re-create our shitty secondary education system at the college level. But other than that, professors/instructors are the singular necessary input for providing higher education. Loan servicing is not necessary for providing education.
My argument isn't that "professors are paid too much." It's that we have too much higher education. Higher education is intrinsically expensive: as you say, professors are necessary input, they get paid above average wages, and we're not automating them away anytime soon. Consequently, we shouldn't encourage millions of kids each year to take on huge amounts of debt to get an education that's worthless.