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Comment by fshbbdssbbgdd | Hacker News Reader

A professorship is a prestige position that’s subject to extreme competition. Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive because every newly minted PhD dreams of becoming a professor. The same isn’t true of a grade school teaching job. People aren’t lining up to babysit a bunch of misbehaving kids.

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> A professorship is a prestige position … Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive …

Per that logic FAANGs should be paying the least to their software engineers, since prestige..

Sorry, but while I’ll agree there may be something to it when comparing one university to another, it doesn’t add up when comparing a K-12 school teacher to a PhD faculty.

Moreover that was just an example, other universities’ salaries are similar..

FAANG employment derives its prestige from the compensation.

It’s supply and demand, not prestige. There are few perfessorship positions, and many qualified to do it, so there is great supply. In this case, supply is high even without high pay due to the prestige.

FAANG high salaries are due to the low supply of engineers skilled enough. Otherwise, FAANG would not compete on pay. As high as FAANG pays, supply is still not high enough to lower pay significantly.

OP is arguing that teachers should not be compared to professors because supply may still not be high relative to demand. Additionally, the job is still essential enough to keep demand high despite lack of prestige.

The K-12 job is usually a hell of a lot harder. In most cases you have to have knowledge in more than one subject, and then deal with whatever psychological issues the students present - whether that's starting fights in class or just not wanting to participate.

In a university setting a problematic and disruptive student just gets kicked out. Nowhere near as much drama.

Especially becoming a prof at a top tier school like Berkeley. Part of the compensation is generally thought to be the ability to have that school on your resume. Its like getting a job at FAANG but instead of tech for resume passing in academia

Can we decouple the high-prestige teaching from the low-prestige babysitting? Meaning, restructure in such a way that different people can specialize in each.

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