When people complain about the exponential increase in costs of higher education and healthcare the first things that gets cited is the salaries of professors and doctors, yet when I talk to friends in these industries about this they roll their  and give a big LOL. Someone must be wrong.<p>Focusing on professors, one the one hand there are people who argue that salaries have not really increased <i>that</i> much: For example [1] claims that &quot;During [the past decade], the salaries of public-college professors, when adjusted for inflation, rose by less than 1 percent at doctoral and baccalaureate institutions and fell by more than 5 percent at master’s universities.&quot; [2] has good data on sociology professors that show that &quot;Over the past 21 years the average sociology faculty salary for all ranks more than doubled in current dollars, increasing by 133 percent by AY 2003&#x2F;2004.&quot; Finally, [3] has some cool plots that you can play with, that show 3x to 4x increase in the time span 1975-2012.<p>So, professor salaries have increased <i>considerably</i>, as this article also states, but it&#x27;s not enough to explain the huge increase in tuition.<p>[1]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chronicle.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;faculty-salaries-barely-budge-2012&#x2F;131432" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chronicle.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;faculty-salaries-barely-budge-2...</a>
[2]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asanet.org&#x2F;footnotes&#x2F;septoct04&#x2F;fn17.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asanet.org&#x2F;footnotes&#x2F;septoct04&#x2F;fn17.html</a>
[3]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;highereddatastories.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;changes-in-faculty-salaries-over-time.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;highereddatastories.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;changes-in-f...</a>