"As someone who has worked exclusively in the private sector, I find some of the arguments raised here astonishing. We have good enough data to determine whether to grant someone lifetime tenure but not enough data to do an annual performance evaluation? Seriously?
Unless we’re dealing with commissioned salespeople or performance-based compensation for hedge fund managers, there are almost never totally non-subjective criteria available to determine annual performance. How do you evaluate someone who works on multi-year projects? By judging them against their peers and against their objectives. There is no reason academia should be different.
The idea that academia is somehow so different from ordinary pursuits that merit-based compensation schemes simply can’t work demands a high burden of proof. Plus, if it were true, then academic output should be totally uncoupled from wages–which suggests one place to start saving money. If we can’t identify great output in order to assign monetary rewards, then cutting those monetary rewards shouldn’t affect the great academic output."
Interesting bit from Volokh. I see most of my private market friends scratching their heads wondering how this can even be debated. My sense, albeit probably very non-PC, is that non-merit based pay is one of, if not THE, primary driver as to why many people chose academia over the private sector. Obviously, I believe almost all compensation should be allocated through a meritocracy and finding metrics to define performance really shouldn't be that hard. From the comments:
