Everyone would like to earn more money. University faculty are no exception.

Last week, the University Faculty Senate released a report on faculty salaries at Penn State. Average salaries were broken down by grade level: assistant, associate and full professor, and by colleges at University Park and at the Commonwealth Campuses.

The report has caused debate as to what the University should do regarding pay discrepancies between the different colleges within the University. Why, people ask, if all professors are asked to do similar tasks to gain promotion, are the salaries not equal across the University?

They suggest that the problem can be solved by some administrative action. Some have suggested unions. Others have recommended making individual faculty salaries public. This discussion will be fruitless. The discrepancies are caused by societal values and cannot be alleviated by any action of the University administration.

One of a professor's most important functions at a research university is writing grants that fund the professor's research and provide operating dollars to the university. Typically, science and engineering departments receive the most money in research grants, contributing more to their faculty's salaries.

In addition to the number of research grants, salaries are determined in part by the market value of faculty outside of academia. The Smeal College of Business Administration and the College of Engineering boast the highest faculty salaries at University Park. If you eliminate those two entries from the salary report released in last week's Centre Daily Times, you would find that salaries for the average associate professor in all of the other colleges vary by $6,000 at most. If there were a medical school or a law school at University Park, you can bet that those salaries would be significantly higher than those in business and engineering. All of these people can command large salaries in private practice, or within corporations.

The deans and department chairs responsible for hiring are managers and do not want to spend more on faculty salaries than they need to. Even with large numbers of applicants, a handful of top universities are competing to attract the top talent. There are a great many things that attract someone to an academic position, including stimulating environment and flexible work schedules. For those perks, they will often accept salaries that are slightly lower than what they would command in private practice. However, salaries must be at least competitive enough to not exert a negative influence on the non-monetary incentives.

For professors in the humanities, social sciences and education, there is no industrial component. Most people who earn Ph.D.s in these fields must work at a university or, perhaps, for the federal government. Deans and department chairs in those colleges can keep their average salaries lower while still keeping quality high.

In a capitalist society, success and achievement are so often synonymous with earning potential. It is unfortunate that people do not recognize further the accomplishments in fields that are not traditionally high-paying. It is even more unfortunate that those professors sometimes feel a loss of morale and a sense of anger toward the professor of business who is making more for the same job.

People make choices about what path they will pursue in life. Some are happy doing what they do in a well-paid field. Still others go into a field simply for the money but hate their jobs. Many are somewhere in between. They make a living but sacrifice huge salaries for happiness.

Fighting with University administration about salaries will not solve anything. The salary gap is not caused by misguided managers at the University, and the solution to the problem is complex. Unions were designed to protect laborers and are not meant for professional educators.

It may be possible to artificially increase salaries beyond their market values and maintain them at such levels, but that will be at a cost to the students who pay the salaries. People are already incensed about the escalating costs of higher education, so that would not stand. A thought of redistributing the wealth and leveling all salaries at a lower level is naive. Sources that provide research dollars to a certain department would not like their money redistributed to fund professors in other disciplines within the University. Besides, faculty quality in certain colleges and departments would suffer.

Policy makers could allocate more money to fund research grants in the humanities and social sciences. Given the current political climate, this would more than likely alienate their constituents who are often too short-sighted to see the benefits of such endeavors.

The answer is in the public at large and with its values. Professors would best support their cause not by arguing about salary discrepancies but by reaching out to the public and convincing it that their work is worthwhile.