James C. Hearn - Pay and Performance in the University: An Examination of Faculty Salaries - The Review of Higher Education 22:

Faculty salaries are a prominent feature of the reward systems under which academic work is done. Not surprisingly, therefore, they are also becoming a rather prominent element in the recent attention paid to college and university productivity. Among those examining salaries in recent years have been legislators curious over how $100,000 a year professors spend their time, journalists worried about rises in tuition rates, attorneys investigating charges of discrimination in hiring and promotions, and faculty concerned about salary imbalances within and across academic departments. Also increasingly interested in salary structures have been central administrators aiming to manage rising costs. Because faculty salaries are usually the largest single item in academic budgets, they are unquestionably central to the productivity of the enterprise. [End Page 391]