Education: `I'm a professor - so why do I earn less than a manager or a doctor?'

BRITISH LECTURERS were not alone when it came to manning the picket lines recently. Worldwide, in continents as diverse as Africa and South America, the last year has provided ample evidence that wherever he or she may live, a lecturer's lot is not always a happy one.

For example in Niger, West Africa. January saw lecturers at one university go on indefinite strike over unpaid salaries; and in Brazil low pay levels last year fuelled a strike that involved as many as 69,000 lecturers.

Whether striking in Sydney, rallying in Rio or delaying clearing closer to home, it appears that many university lecturers have little to smile about.

Where universities have to compete with banks and other high-paying industries for staff, most academic salaries do not compete with those offered by the private sector.

The most successful academics, making it to professor level, could in many countries considerably increase their salaries if they were to move into the private sector.

And it is not just in pay terms that academics have been losing out. Once upon a time a university lecturer held a position that commanded considerable respect within society, but, according to Andris Barblan, secretary general of the Association of European Universities, times are changing. Within Europe, the more southerly Latin countries now attach more esteem to university posts than their northern counterparts.

"In Italy, you are still called `professore' when you arrive at a hotel, and your wife is `Mrs professore'," he explains. "A Dutch professor may be more highly paid than me, but he is probably not as highly regarded as a professor is in Italy."

Australia

Salaries for academics here, taking account of the cost of living, are largely on a par with those in the UK. Unions are now demanding pay increases of 19 per cent, to be phased over the next three years.

According to Grahame McCulloch, general secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, the increase is needed partly to put university academics on a par with groups against which they have traditionally been benchmarked.

"We lag 8 per cent behind state school teachers and research scientists. We want parity with these groups," he explains. "Our members have not shared in the productivity gains that the sector as a whole has enjoyed over the last four years."

But the Australian government has already made it clear that there will be no further money to meet salary increases; rather, the last three years have seen government cuts to university operating grants. An increase in academic salaries of an average 12 per cent in 1997 led to universities losing about 2,000 staff.

Simon Marginson, reader at Monash University's Centre for Research in International Education, suggests: "Starting salaries for academics in Australia are probably not as good as those for a first-year teacher."

Though academic salaries outstrip teachers after five years, he says: "Where we are not competitive is at the top of the range."

Australian universities have not been able to compete with those of the US in salary terms for the past 30 years, he says, adding that an increasing number of Australian academics would move to the US if they could, to reduce some of their administrative load and to get more support in their work as scholars.

So far, academics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, at the University of Woolongong, and the University of Queensland, to name but three, have taken to the picket line, but the only winners so far are Sydney University staff, who have accepted a 14.7 per cent pay increase.

Hong Kong

Academics here receive double the average salary of their counterparts in Australia, Canada and the UK, particularly in the higher ranks. A newly appointed professor in a Hong Kong university can expect a US university style salary of HK$1.2m (pounds 98,000), reaching as high as HK$1.8m (pounds 145,000).

But even here, where academics appear to be doing well in terms of pay, salaries are reportedly not as high as those offered in business, or to lawyers and doctors.

Sweden

A professor moving into industry in Sweden could, it is claimed, more than double his salary.

"Academics are leaving Sweden," claims Ian Cotgreave, associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He adds that top graduates, too, are currently being creamed off by high-paying pharmaceutical companies who offer them salaries they cannot resist.

"I am an associate professor with 15 years' experience, and I am on the equivalent of pounds 25,000. A doctor here working in a hospital for five years would be earning the same kind of salary, but they are also badly paid for the job they do.

"Academics are not paid compared to people in business or computers, or finance or property here in Sweden," he points out. "Academics are leaving both the system and the country; the net effect is a brain drain from public universities."