Academic Salaries in the UK and US

Abstract

We examine the wages of graduates inside and outside of academe in both the UK and US. We find that in both the UK and the US an average graduate working in the HE sector would earn less over his or her lifetime than graduates working in non-academic sectors. The largest disparity occurs throughout the earlier and middle career period and so if people discount their future earnings, the difference will be even greater than these figures suggest. Academics in the UK earn less than academics in the US at all ages. This difference cannot be explained by differences in observable characteristics such as age, gender or ethnicity. This leads us to conclude that the differences in UK and US academic wages are unlikely to be due to differences in the academics themselves, but rather to differences in labour markets generally and in systems of higher education between the two countries, which suggests that there is a strong pay incentive for academics to migrate from the UK to the US.

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