Excessive Professor Salary at Thunderbird

[burbuja0512]

I also am not against high business school salaries, but I think that they should be relative to the amount of money the professor could make if he/she were working in the "real world." For example, if you can get a 700k job in the business world, that means that you are able to easily find work as the CEO of a mid-sized company. Perhaps not the Fortune 500, but those guys (well mostly guys anyhow) make millions. However, if you don't have the skills and business savvy to obtain a 700k job, then why should you make that much teaching? I don't think it's unreasonable to pay high dollar amounts to learn from the best.. after all, many successful C-level types make a fortune on books and speaking engagements because people want to learn their secrets. But paying that much to relatively unknown professors whose business world contributions are minimal seems foolish.

I feel bad for the people who've shelled out a ton of cash to get a Thunderbird degree only to find out that it'll be moving into the for-profit world. What a shame that with all of the high salaries paid to business "experts," they couldn't have a school that could run effectively. I think that fact in and of itself is going to greatly hurt the reputation for degree holders. If T-Bird is known as the management school that didn't know how to manage itself, it sounds very bad for the quality of the education that they could have imparted on the students.

In reality, I'm certain that the education has been top notch or they wouldn't have such a solid reputation as one of the best schools for graduate-level international business education, but it still doesn't look good...

However, overall, I believe that the education is only part of what an MBA offers. When you pay that sort of money to go to a prestigious school, you are IMHO also paying for the connections you make. So, maybe the ROI on the T-Bird education isn't what you learn, but perhaps the fact that you're studying side-by-side with people who can help you get your foot in the door at a company you want to work for. However, if the prestige lessens but the tuition does not, this will not be a solid justification to attend their school in the future.