Bret Devereaux

I'm always puzzled by the Hollywood tendency to depict as academics as these detached, wealthy almost-patrician figures - fancy suits, expensive cars, fine wines and well-appointed offices. What schools did all of these screen-writers go to? And are they hiring?

Now, to be clear, at least on the tenure-track, professors are hardly poor. TT starting salaries in the humanities are usually something like 1.5-2x the median personal income (note, *personal* not household) in the USA.

But we're hardly talking cigar-chomping-in-our-wood-paneled-offices money there, even for successful, late-career academics.

I'm actually not sure this is true. Endowed chairs at elite schools can pay a quarter million dollars a year or more, which is satisfactorily cigar-chomping money as far as I'm concerned, particularly when you consider that the holders almost all *came* from money also.