[angelbob]

Hm. I know the guy who ran the Master of Software Engineering department at CMU West (in Mountain View.) And he didn't make the "average full professor" amount you're claiming. And one would assume he'd be making at least average for a professor.

That would be crazy money in Pittsburgh. Are you sure that figure is accurate?

[nmrm2]

> Are you sure that figure is accurate?

1. I don't have first-hand information about CMU, I got the data from here:

http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mello...

Other data indicate that the six figure range is definitely accurate for CS associate and full professorships at research universities:

https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey...

And it's not insane to assume that the top schools pay 30-50k more.

2. It is an average. Lots of compounding factors: Was the person running the program a Full Professor? (Most professors are not full professors, and a lot of faculty aren't professors. Note the 50k+ discrepancy between assistant and full professors.) Did he have a research lab and how does CMU factor grants into compensation? Etc. I don't know the specific details about that particular person (or even CMU), but I also don't have any reason to doubt the numbers given above.

[angelbob]

I'm pretty sure the guy running the department was a full professor, yeah.

They don't say anything about how they get their data, which is a little odd.

Yeah, the numbers on the second page seem more realistic to me. They give more like $95k for a full professor -- which, after Silicon Valley adjustment and the extra $30-$50k you mention is more like $130k-$175k for a full professor. That's much closer to what I've seen than $195k.

So I think the first site is just wrong in how they're estimating, at least for CMU.

[nmrm2]

> So I think the first site is just wrong in how they're estimating, at least for CMU.

Those numbers are FOR CMU, and they are the only numbers we have for CMU. So I'm not really sure how this gets resolved.

> They give more like $95k for a full professor

No, they don't. They say $111,262 (see CS, not overall). Average. (And that's just salary -- a CS professor at a top school has plenty of built-in options for making money on the side.) So you're are assuming that one of the top CS schools in the country pays 15k below national avage.