accountability.

Assuming that we did, for example, double salaries for all teachers, much of that money would be necessarily wasted in the short run. For example, let’s divide up current faculty into three buckets:

1) Those who are currently worth more and would be properly compensated by the raise

2) Those who are not currently worth more, but would step up over time and become “worth it”

3) Those who are not currently worth the money and never will be

#3 would be eliminated by increasing accountability along with the salary

For example, faculty in many departments at my university are undergoing post-tenure review. That’s because the newer faculty are very high performing. That creates new and higher standards for performance that are pushing the older ones to step up. They now have the choice to either step up with the newer faculty or lose tenure. The performance evaluation is all based on peer reviews, student ratings, objective metrics for research productivity.

But this process all started by paying more for new faculty which is what attracted the high performing faculty in the first place.

But it just takes time.

EDIT: I should note that I’ve seen this exact process take place at three of the universities I’ve worked at. It works