UNDER THE MICRSCOPE:Why do those in science, technology and engineering earn less than medics?, asks Dr William Reville
A REPORT BY John Walsh in the Irish Independent on May 5th caught my attention. It was headlined "Universities Facing Double Investigation into Salaries" and began: "Two separate State agencies are now investigating the supersized salaries and extra allowances being paid by universities. It can also be revealed today that a total of 33 academics and senior administrators are on massive salaries of up to €220,000".
The really interesting thing for me is not the people who are the subject of the paper's report, but other university academics who are on even more "massive" salaries than €220,000, and to whom the report does not refer at all. I am talking about the clinical medical professors (obstetrics and gynaecology, surgery, pathology, medical microbiology, pharmacology, medical imaging) whose current salary, according to the UCC website, is €234,523. Senior clinical medical lecturers are paid €199,575 per annum. These medical salaries have always been at such relatively high levels. The maximum annual salary of a non-medical professor at UCC is €136,034 and senior non-medical lecturers reach a maximum of €94,271.
Nobody is "investigating" the academic clinical medical salaries. No report describes them as "supersized" or "massive", even though they are close to double the highest comparable non-medical academic salaries. No, the investigation is only of the handful of non-medical university staff who are being paid up to €220,000.
And, in the non-academic world, nobody bats an eyelid when Minister for Health Mary Harney offers a salary of €260,000 per year for a 40-hour week to medical consultants who sign up to the new consultant contract, despite the constant public complaints about inadequate resources in the health services and the call by Government on public servants to moderate demands for wage increases.
Why are we conditioned to uncritically accept that medical professionals in the public services area are paid at least double what other professionals are paid? Is the training required to become a medical consultant twice as long as the training required for most other professions? Is the work done by the medical consultant twice as hard and important as the work done by other professionals? Is it because we feel that at some stage our very lives could lie in the hands of a medical practitioner? Or is it because the medical profession has always demanded and received very high remuneration and we have become used to it?
It is true that a long and difficult (although fairly well paid) medical apprenticeship must be served before one reaches consultant level, but it is no longer or more difficult than the apprenticeship that must be served before reaching the highest non-medical university academic levels, or senior levels of architecture, for example. Medical consultants work hard, but not any harder than professionals in other areas, eg top scientists, engineers, architects. Consultants bear high levels of responsibility, but no higher than a design engineer on a dam project, an airline pilot, a school principal, a research team leader, and so on.
If all medical doctors suddenly disappeared, hardship would undoubtedly result in the absence of medical doctors. Surgery would be left undone, much diagnosis of disease would stop as would most specialised treatments. Chaos would reign in hospital AE departments, and so on. But essential immunisations and administration of drugs could continue, administered by nurses and scientists. Civilisation would not collapse. On the other hand, if scientists, engineers and technicians vanished the entire infrastructure on which modern society depends for energy, communication, transport, even modern medicine, would wind down and collapse.
You might think that I have "my knife" in the medical profession, but far from it. I admire the way medicine maintains its standards and protects its interests. Medical practitioners must undergo long training, they work hard, they do a very important job and they do it well. They should be well paid. My point is that all of this applies to many other professions also but their members are paid much less than medical practitioners. Why?
Ireland must build a knowledge-based economy quickly or face dire consequences. We therefore must attract many more of our brightest students into science, engineering and technology, the areas on which the new economy will be built. But, how can we do this when our young people see other professions (pre-eminently medicine, but also branches of the legal, financial and economic professions) enjoying much higher remuneration?
William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC - understandingscience. ucc.ie