Excessive Professor Salary at Thunderbird

[burbuja0512]

One of my first jobs was at a for-profit English school in Mexico. I loved it- the classes were good and the teaching method was unique and effective. The only problem was that with any for-profit, education is important, but not the primary goal. What this meant was that while most people that entered ended up learning English, many who didn't try very hard or just weren't very talented ended up getting pushed through because they were paying. It was an expensive school with small class sizes and we had a bare minimum number of 4 people per class to maintain a profitable group. So, if there were 3 good ones and one horrible one in a group, this bad person would pass each level regardless, otherwise we would have to shut the class and lose the revenue for all 4 students.

However... this school was not giving degrees, it was just teaching English so it wasn't a degree mill, just a for-profit school that was indeed very profitable. But the problem of profit does lead to the typical issues that you see with UOP graduates. Some of them bust their butt and learn a lot, but others seem to be barely literate.. yes, if they can pay the tuition, they will somehow manage to get a degree. The fact that everyone knows someone like this who is a UOP graduate is what gives the school a really bad reputation.

@Ryoder - yes I do think that B-schools should want profit as should their professors, but not unjustifiably so. Just like any employee can't walk into a company and ask for a 700k salary, you have to bring some serious skills to the organization. While I have no doubt that this particular professor is excellent, the point that he isn't contributing to the academic community or doing much beyond teaching classes does call into question his high cost. At some B-schools, professors will work with students to create start-up companies that serve as projects for the students and create revenue for the schools - these are the types of professors who should be making the big bucks. OR take someone like Michael Porter... I don't care how much he makes, it's probably not enough. I don't know if there's an MBA program out there that doesn't extensively use and cite his work. This is what I'm talking about.. pay a lot of money, but create value at the same time. There's nothing wrong with making lots of money, but it's cases like this with T-bird where the perceived "bang for the buck" just isn't there with some of these professors.