THE SALARIES OF PHDS IN ACADEME AND ELSEWHERE

It has long been known that Ph.D.'s working for academic institutions earn less than Ph.D.'s in the same disciplines working for other kinds of employers, especially government and industry. It has not been possible to tell, however, whether this difference in earnings represents a difference in average quality of the employees in the two sectors or whether it represents a compensating differential reflecting the greater autonomy and freedom from control of superiors in the academic sector and the greater job security of tenured professors. It is now possible to answer this question through the use of special tabulations of data from the Survey of Doctoral Recipients of the National Research Council (1989).