And this is where my personality begins to show. I start to wonder, What are the real odds of winning? The
odds are clearly stated in fine print, but are they true? I look around. The restaurant is empty of customers
except for my three children and me. Leftovers from other customers lie scattered about. Some trays even
have remains with unpulled sticky tabs. There are also the garbage bins, wiped clean on the outside. It
seems an acceptable repository to go in search of more tabs, as long as our mining doesn't go too deep.
We collect 36. All but three come with messages urging us to "stay in the game." We eventually have a
whole neighborhood of avenues, as well as a "Place," if I am reading through smeared ketchup correctly.
Alas, and unsurprisingly, we are not winners.
Short of directly contacting McDonald's headquarters—and probably not even then—I have no way of
learning the actual odds. It's all a game, one with bold statements, flashy packaging, and a series of quips,
some coming with predictable and extraneous exclamation points. And that is how I ended up in
McDonald's in the first place, with my crumpled letters full of similarly bold pronouncements.
I'm a professor of earth sciences at an elite private research university—one in the top 15, if you believe the
oft-touted rankings pumped into my e-mail from the administration every month.
Now, I am the first to admit that I could save money by cutting costs in my family budget. We didn't need
that vacation at a lake last summer, I don't really need to build a hummingbird garden, and my daughter
definitely doesn't need advanced dancing classes. We also could scrap our weekly adventures through an
array of fine fast-food dining establishments, although an evening at Taco Bell gets close to breaking even,
if you swap water for sodas and convince your kids that they really like bean burritos. I also fully
appreciate that most people, in the United States and definitely in places abroad, are worse off than we are.
I should be grateful, and I am.
As I bite into my first Big Mac, all of that resonates along with some intriguing and basic facts. I can
readily obtain the average salaries for academics at public universities across America. I can categorize the
salaries by field and university profile. I can understand the metrics for pay in many cases. I can imagine
why different academics receive different salaries. I also can read my university's extraordinary goals, lofty
visions, and glossy brochures, filled with crisply manufactured blurbs espousing greatness, several with
exclamation points. I can pull all the sticky tabs within this framework. I can even dig deep into the garbage
for more data.
However, no matter how one minces the patties, my salary is significantly below average compared with
those of commensurate positions across public research universities, including in my state. Other than a few
good colleagues, who have assured me that they make slightly less or slightly more than me, I have no
direct information on how my salary compares with other faculty members' pay at my university or other
private universities. What several of us know, however, is that we, at least in earth science, make about 10
to 12 percent less than what's reported for similar positions in our field at public universities.
So, as I begin my second Big Mac, I ask myself: Are we having family night at McDonald's instead of
sushi at Miyako's because I haven't published enough highly cited papers, I haven't pulled in sufficient
external grants, I haven't taught effectively, I haven't dressed appropriately? Or some combination of those
and myriad other reasons? Maybe I am just way below an average full professor. I can accept any of those
possibilities, if outlined and explained.
Eventually, though, a basic problem arises: Being at an elite private university, I have no idea why I am
paid what I am paid, and whether it is reasonable. I can arrive at a Fermi solution as to what I should
receive, but the assumptions involve average salaries at public institutions, generic criteria for merit, and as
best as I can figure, some pickles, onions, and sesame-seed buns.
In the end, I have no means to deduce the answer without directly contacting headquarters, upon which I
receive, from the president, an emphatic message: "I can say unequivocally that it is not true that as a