Comments on: An Argument Against Merit Pay for Faculty

By: TRE

TRE — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:19:40 +0000

On a side note: The system for determining “merit” of law students imposes significant costs that harm the educational mission.

By: Edward Swaine

Edward Swaine — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:36:19 +0000

I completely agree with the arguments in your post, and disagree with the letter (though at the end, it seems to reserve a margin for merit pay, so perhaps the issue is simply one of scale). No merit pay system, within academia or otherwise, is entirely successful at defining and quantifying merit, and all such systems impose substantial costs; I’m surprised to hear anyone who has been through the process within a corporation claim to the contrary.

Were you more tendentious, you might have titled the post “A *Faculty* Argument Against Merit Pay for Faculty,” “A *Tenured Faculty* Argument,” or gone still further. Honestly, if the alternative is to let each faculty member judge himself or herself along dimensions like “generosity, energy, attitude, idealism, ability to learn, leadership, intellectual humility,” etc., I think we would each somehow emerge with equal and stunningly high scores — starting, of course, with humility.

By: David Zaring

David Zaring — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:02:14 +0000

If there’s one thing there isn’t these days, it’s measures of faculty quality. Peridier is right – it would be way too hard to develop, say, a ranking system or a system based on citations….

By: Orin Kerr

Orin Kerr — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:24:16 +0000

Peridier is right. The answer is to pay every academic based on minimum wage. This would free up an extraordinary amount of time currently wasted on measurement, and lead to much more productive faculty members.

By: Jason Mazzone

Jason Mazzone — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:31:34 +0000

I understand that some law schools pay a bonus to faculty members who place an article in a top journal (according to a list determined by the Dean at the beginning of the academic year). So that is something of a compromise. I wonder what effect it has on productivity, sociability, and other factors? One could imagine other possibilities. How about $1 every time your article on SSRN is downloaded? (10 cents if your last name is Solove)

By: anon

anon — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:10:59 +0000

I would add that resentment is caused not only by merit-based pay, but by the lock-step (or whatever the alternative to merit) pay too. Take two scholars. One consistently publishes 5 high-quality papers a year, speaks at multiple conferences, organizes workshops at home school, gives workshops elsewhere, serves on boards of professional organizations, referees peer-reviewed conferences and journals, and is a highly visible figure coveted by many higher-ranked schools. Works 70 hours a week on scholarship and teaching. He/she has a colleague who merely teaches classes and then goes home to play tennis or do outside consulting or whatever. Works 20 hours a week on scholarship and teaching. Why should they receive the same, or even similar, pay from the school? How is it “fair” to give them the same pay?