Are you a professor? A researcher?
I taught in a grad student only program at an R1 school. In addition to my ‘2 classes a term,’ I wrote articles, presented at conferences, developed and held local conferences, performed research, advised students (including thesis students, which takes a lot of work), and sat on several committees a year. I also wrote and graded grad level exam questions for students outside my department, but in my area of expertise and sat on several grad student exam or thesis committees each year. I did not make 6 figures.
Those who teach in undergrad programs generally teach 3-5 classes a term. The amount of extra time they put in for research, etc. depends upon the type of school they are in, an R1 or a liberal arts college. What they don’t do in research, they do in advising student organizations, grading, advising, faculty & university committee membership, etc. Especially in the humanities, 6 figures would be a dream.
The academic world is not what you think it is. I know professors at all types of institutions in a diversity of fields. They work hard for their money. Some have developed marvelous computing tools and applications. Some ‘just’ bring the wonderful worlds of art and literature to their students, broadening their minds and horizons. No one is sitting at home eating bon bons.
The academic world is absolutely what I think it is. I have several close friends who are college professors, and to a man (or woman) they say it would not be a bad life except... for the bureaucracy which interferes in their lives and work. I, myself, spent several years in grad school, and saw it all up close and personal, thank you.
I did NOT say that anyone is sitting at home eating bonbons. What I said is that a six-figure salary should be adequate for anyone in such a position, and no one should complain about being asked to forfeit a few bucks when business is bad, as it manifestly is. In any other loine of work, when business is bad, everyone takes a hit. People get let go, something about which tenured professors do not worry.
Moreover, tuition figures should be set at actual cost, not foisted off on the public, which gets no benefit whatsoever from Little Junior spending four years studying Renaissance Literature.
The professors I know have a tough time bringing benefit to their students, inasmuch as they are forced to file countless reports; waste endless hours seeking approval for trivial changes in lesson plans, which have to be filed in elaborate and pointless detail; waste more time in ‘self-evaluations’ and other pointless, modern, PC crap, and all of it just to give an army of college bureaucrats some way to justify the expense of hiring those bureaucrats, keeping them on, and wasting time and money that would be far better spent elsewhere.
Communism has not only infested our government, it’s weighting down and screwing up America’s colleges, too. You want to keep paying professors top salaries? Get rid of the commissars and bureaucrats!