I'm on an advisory board for the CS department at the local CC. They have a real problem hiring teachers, because their students end up making more than them at an entry level. And not just a little more, a lot more. So anyone they hire to teach the material is poached almost immediately, or quits due to despair at the situation. Not sure how to fix this, but it's a terrible situation for an educational institution.
What makes you assume run-of-the-mill admin at a CC are paid well, or better?
Anyway, as far as the school is concerned, they can survive without a robust or effective CS department, but they can't survive without the admin, which is true. It takes a lot of work to run a college, and CS profs aren't the ones who do that.
Paying more to better CS profs doesn't make financial sense, because they're not going to yield more students as a result. So they'd be dumping more money on a teacher to teach the same number of students. And no matter what they could pay them, it wouldn't be enough to offset what they could make in industry.
I don't dispute your claim (and am personally swayed of the argument of technical > admin in most situations) - do you have data that shows this disparity?
Purely conjecture (which means absolutely nothing), I've always assumed that admin:faculty rates are similar, but the volume is where it matters (ie. 2x more admin:faculty in headcount).
I don't, but suppose on a pure hourly basis they're paid the same. I think that's still unfair, given the amount of value a CS lecturer delivers over an admin.
