Reflecting about the last post reinforces something I’ve noticed for a while: that blogging makes you, if not actually smarter, then at least more careful and better-informed. In the past I might have noticed the story about science education and responded with a practiced sigh. But in blogging about it, I went and took the three minutes necessary to find some actual evidence of how much money teachers made compared to other professions. If my opinions don’t actually change, at least the quality of evidence I can adduce for them improves a great deal.
By the way, I should have recognized that some people wouldn’t take the time to click the link to the study of salaries for different professions of Penn alumni. So, to save valuable time, here are the basic figures in convenient table format:
| Industry | Average Salary | ||
| Communications | $163,414 | ||
| Consulting | $147,450 | ||
| Elementary/Secondary Education | $47,482 | ||
| Financial Services | $471,462 | ||
| Government | $82,677 | ||
| Higher Education | $58,623 | ||
| Law/Judiciary | $186,663 | ||
| Manufacturing | $120,324 | ||
| Medicine | $197,492 | ||
| Non-profit | $68,173 | ||
| Other Medical/Health | $100,711 | ||
| Other Services | $169,403 |
I wonder what precisely is included in “Financial Services.” Organized crime? Iraqi reconstruction contracts?