[pcrh]

The academic staff are certainly not paid better (relatively). Indeed, there has a been a profound shift from teaching being done by professors to being done mostly by those less qualified and paid the least: grad students and postdocs. The salaries of proper academic staff, and the ratio of staff to students also have not increased. What has increased, though, is the number and salaries of administrative staff.

[throwaway1979]

What is shocking is that in disciplines like CS, profs are expected to pull in grants that cover their salaries. So effectively, the tuition students pay isn't even paying for the salaries of the professorial staff. Also, the University charges an overhead percentage on grants received. Of course, different universities do it their own way. But the money side of academia is dark and dark indeed.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Yup, overhead ranges from 40-70%