Who should be paid more money?

[AMoore]

On the salary aspect you did not comprehend my point. What I said was that my colleague was looking to leave her position as an industrial Ph.D. level scientist and take a position in one of the local school districts. Her salary at the time was around 90K. When you prorate (for vacation) what her salary would have been as a teacher, then she would not have been losing out significantly. The wife of another colleague has also recently left industry and is now in CB school district. Her salary has taken a small hit, but not a significant one.

In both cases, their number of hours worked have gone down and their stress levels have gone down. Plain, simple and real examples of Ph.D scientists leaving industry and going for (in their words) the easy life of teaching. They are now happier people now that they are teaching.

These are people that have seen both sides of the fence. You have not seen both sides of the fence (neither have I), you are not an industrial scientist. I had to laugh when you talked about the hours above... worst case of a 9 hour day... oh boy, that's a hard life. Life is hard when you have a 9 hour day.

As a scientist, you should know that it is silly to view the salary and stress levels for a teacher in Central Bucks with that of the average teacher in other parts of the state.  If you do that, you might as well compare the average PhD to a top scientist at Merck or Exxon.

And like I said, you can't compare performing on stage for 6 hours a day (to an audience that, for the most part, has no interest in seeing the show), and then taking care of two hours of desk work, to any normal workday in industry.  I routinely have 12-14 hour days in my current profession.  As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, a tough day practicing law is easier than an easy day of teaching.

By the way, I think some European labs have some openings if your not happy here.