ASU Professor Salaries Above Average

The Arizona Republic reports that tenure-track professors at Arizona State University made an average salary of $102,500, up from $98,000 last year. (The median salary in the state of Arizona, according to payscale.com, is $50,000.) ASU President Michael Crow's salary is $580,000, making him the 10th highest-paid public university head.

Yet it's the University of Arizona in Tucson that has had the foresight to raise over $1 billion in endowment funding, as part of a five-year plan that reached its goal 21 months early.

Added 12/16/2005: By contrast:

Depending on the type of work they do, computer software engineers in metro Phoenix earn an average $71,580 to $78,240, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the low end, that's 55 percent more than the median household income of $46,111 in Maricopa County.

And those are mostly jobs that do not have summer vacations.