Academic salaries

Marginal Revolution points to an international index of PPP-adjusted faculty salaries. Alas, New Zealand isn't there listed. We'll work up the NZ figures; the Inside Higher Ed table is cribbed at the bottom of the post.

Entry-level in New Zealand is Lecturer; Assistant Lecturer is a rank generally reserved for those still finishing up their Doctorates. Or, at least, that's how it's used in Commerce at Canterbury.

OECD says the PPP exchange rate for 2010 was about 1.6

The starting rung on the Lecturer scale is around NZ$71,500. As a monthly salary, that's NZ$5,950. Or US$3720. Between Italy and Australia.

A mid-range Senior Lecturer gets around NZ$100k, or US$5,200 per month. Between Germany and The Netherlands.

The middle of the Professorial scale sits around NZ$150k, or US$7800 per month. Higher than Oz and the US.

What's missing? Non-salary compensation is going to be a bigger part of the bundle at US schools than at NZ ones, so differences are somewhat understated. Further, I'm not sure whether the salaries reported for the States are 9 month or 12 month; while in New Zealand we're on annual salaries, a lot of American schools have faculty on 9 month contract that are supplemented by summer research grants that might not be included in these figures

Also, American averages mask a lot more dispersion than do Kiwi ones that tend to be pretty flat across disciplines. Our compensation schedules are consequently relatively generous in English literature and relatively weaker in business disciplines.

On the whole, though, we're more competitive than I'd thought. Especially once you account for that, once you're here, you adjust your consumption bundle with the changes in relative prices instead of just trying to buy the bundle you would have bought in the US - things could look a bit different if we used a Kiwi consumption bundle as benchmark.

[note: updated to fix formatting]

Monthly Average Salaries of Public Higher Education Faculty, Using U.S. PPP Dollars

Country	Entry	Average	Top
Armenia	$405	$538	$665
Russia	433	617	910
China	259	720	1,107
Ethiopia	864	1,207	1,580
Kazakhstan	1,037	1,553	2,304
Latvia	1,087	1,785	2,654
Mexico	1,336	1,941	2,730
Czech Republic	1,655	2,495	3,967
Turkey	2,173	2,597	3,898
Colombia	1,965	2,702	4,058
Brazil	1,858	3,179	4,550
Japan	2,897	3,473	4,604
France	1,973	3,484	4,775
Argentina	3,151	3,755	4,385
Malaysia	2,824	4,628	7,864
Nigeria	2,758	4,629	6,229
Israel	3,525	4,747	6,377
Norway	4,491	4,940	5,847
Germany	4,885	5,141	6,383
Netherlands	3,472	5,313	7,123
Australia	3,930	5,713	7,499
United Kingdom	4,077	5,943	8,369
Saudi Arabia	3,457	6,002	8,524
United States	4,950	6,054	7,358
India	3,954	6,070	7,433
South Africa	3,927	6,531	9,330
Italy	3,525	6,955	9,118
Canada	5,733	7,196	9,485