ABSTRACT
This chapter examines highly paid academics—or academic top earners—employed across universities in ten European countries. It argues that while, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the university research mission typically pays off at an individual level, in Continental Europe, it pays off only in combination with administrative and related duties. The chapter focuses on high incomes in an older cohort of academics and the odds of receiving them, rather than—as in traditional academic salary studies—all academics and all academic incomes in general. In a standard human capital model, academic earnings are a function of research productivity, as well as any factors that affect the equilibrium supply of labor. The academic performance stratification tends to overlap with the academic salary stratification. The massification of higher education inevitably leads to the massification of the academic profession, with dramatic consequences—especially outside of Europe—in terms of its social and financial standing.
