I taught at a Big Ten university and a large part of its budget was set by the State, so there is a lot of truth to that argument. However, most articles written about the cost of education make no distinction between in-state and out-of-state tuition rates, with most using the more expensive tuition figures. My Ph.D. is in economics even though I ended up teaching in the computer science department (long story). The point is that I don’t think I ever approached 50% parity in terms of salary with a non-teaching job. Still, that was my choice and I did it because I truly enjoyed teaching. That said, there are other majors where the faculty were well over 100% parity because they were teaching in a field where there literally is no alternative to teaching.
I 40 years of teaching, I have never seen the AAUP come in and do anything about salaries. Their big issue is tenure and faculty rights. To me, tenure is the culprit as to what’s wrong with higher education today, and that extends to the NEA and high school (and lower) education. Fighting the AAUP on salaries is the wrong windmill...get rid of tenure and I think most problems fade away.
They, the administrators, are getting rid of tenure by hiring more and more part-time and adjunct faculty who aren’t knowledgeable or qualified to teach. The problem is the point of college is no longer education. It is to coddle to students, collect their money, and give them a piece of paper that says they’ve been there.
” ... get rid of tenure and I think most problems fade away.”
Except, of course, salaries - at least in those fields where there are viable alternatives to college teaching.