Academic salary in 29 countries
A report penned by Eduardo Cabrera in Chilean newspaper La Tercera (28/1/2013, p.7) shows that academics in the country receive some of the highest salaries in Latin America. Chilean academics working in state universities earned an average monthly salary of $3,700 USD (around £28,000 per annum); a rate higher than most in the region including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. only surpassed by Argentina. Nevertheless the average academic salary for Chile was found to be a full 6% below the international average.
The analysis was based on a joint study, carried out by the Boston College Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) and the Laboratory for Institutional Analysis (LIA) at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, in which 28 countries were surveyed. The study included all lecturers, both full and part-time and considered academic remuneration in terms of basic gross salaries in 2008 but incentives or bonuses were excluded from the analysis.
The figures are standardised using purchasing powerparity (PPP).
Top paying Chilean universities included Talca, Tecnológica Metropolitana and Tarapacá, awarding average monthly salaries of $5,725 USD, $4,564 USD and $4,283 USD, respectively. Surprisingly, the average salary at the highly regarded Universidad de Chile in Santiago was only slightly higher than the average for the country at $3,796 USD. The worst payers were Valparaíso and Playa Ancha, dolling out a mere average of $2,600 USD (les than an annual salary of £20,000).
The full international comparison data can be seen in the table below
| Country | Average monthly gross salary (PPP) USD |
Estimated annual gross salary in sterling GBP |
| Canada | $7,196 | £54,570 |
| Italy | $6,955 | £52,812 |
| South Africa | $6,531 | £49,590 |
| India | $6,070 | £38,410 |
| USA | $6,054 | £45,968 |
| Saudi Arabia | $6,002 | £45,576 |
|
UK |
$5,943 | £45,128 |
| Australia | $5,713 | £43,378 |
| Holland | $5,313 | £40,341 |
| Germany | $5,141 | £32,520 |
| Norway | $4,940 | £37,509 |
| Israel | $4,747 | £36,046 |
| Nigeria | $4,629 | £29,290 |
| Malaysia | $4,628 | £35,140 |
| Argentina | $3,755 | £28,513 |
| Chile | $3,718 | £28,232 |
| France | $3,484 | £26,420 |
| Japan | $3,743 | £28,422 |
| Brazil | $3,179 | £24,104 |
| Colombia | $2,702 | £20,517 |
| Turkey | $2,597 | £19,720 |
| Czech Republic | $2,495 | £18,920 |
| Mexico | $1,941 | £14,739 |
| Latvia | $1,785 | £13,554 |
| Kazakhstan | $1,553 | £11,792 |
| Ethiopia | $1,207 | £9,152 |
| China | $720 | £5,467 |
| Russia | $617 | £4,685 |
| Armenia | $538 | £4,085 |
Source: La Tercera.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Chileno on 31/01/13 at 09:25:00 am . Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
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10/02/13 @ 02:21:25 am
I'm pretty sceptical about these figures. For example, the average earnings for an academic in South Africa are a hell of a lot less than this, by my reckoning. What source did 'La Tercera' use, then?
10/02/13 @ 11:02:14 am
Thanks Warren for your comments which have stimulated some more thinking on the issue. Yes, I'm sure the figures from the study are up for debate, which should be a good read. Don't forget, though that the figures are in PPP to allow for a fair comparison of salary across countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity.
The calculation by Eduardo Cabrera for La Tercera was made for Chile as an addition to a recent study, "Paying the Professoriate (http://routledge-ny.com/books/details/9780415898072/) which did not include Chile.
Before publishing this post, I checked with study author, Ivan Pachecho who in an email said, "The information presented in La Tercera [on Chile] was collected and analyzed by Eduardo Cabrera, the journalist who wrote the article, and I just provided him with some background information and validated his calculations."
Here's another post by Ivan that might be useful:
http://uv-net.uio.no/wpmu/hedda/2012/04/02/guest-blogger-academic-compensation-around-the-world-it-is-not-just-about-the-salary/
You can also get more information in the project website: http://acarem.hse.ru/.
The following story is several years old but is interesting nonetheless as it talks about the South African case: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/salaries-of-sa-academics-are-tops-1.1005909#.URd9M_K9aSo
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