Of the many complaining questions that faculty members ask, the one I used to hear most often was, “Why do you administrators make so much more money than we do?” The answer is simple: Administrators work harder, they have more work to do, and they actually do it.
Now that I have made the passage back from administrator to faculty member, I know how true that is. Where before my calendar was crowded and even double-booked, now the largely empty pages beckon me forward to a life of comparative ease and downright leisure. Sure, I have some students to teach, and some papers to correct, and I chair a committee and go to a few meetings and write columns and essays; but I did all of that when I was a dean in addition to everything I did because I was a dean.