Another Resource for Faculty Candidates

The NALP recently made available its Buying Power Index for Class of 2010. The Buying Power Index (BPI) is a great resource for law-school graduates, but it's also a great resource for faculty candidates. To calculate the BPI for a city, the NALP takes the median reported starting salary  for that city, and divides it by the salary required to get the standard of living as you would have with a salary of $160,000 in New York City.  For example in Houston, a salary of $68,100 is the equivalent of $160,000 in New York City.  That means that the cost-of-living in Houston is 43% (68,100/160,000) of New York City's.

Suppose that you have offers from schools in two different cities, Austin  and Minneapolis.  To determine the relative cost-of-living, take the NYC $160,000 equivalents--$70,600 (Austin) and $82,000 (Minneapolis). The cost-of-living in Austin is  86% (70,600/62,000) of that in Minneapolis.  Of course, other factors might be relevant.  For example, I don't know whether the cost-of-living index used by NALP adjusted for differences in tax rates.  And, as Elie Mystal (Above the Law) pointed out, cost-of-living does not include the intangibles of living in one city or another.  In the Austin/Minneapolis example, one person might treasure Austin's music scene, while another might want to watch Garrison Keilor live (though you have to cross the river into St. Paul to do that).

And there are the intangibles of the law schools:  ranking; course fit; collegiality of the faculty; and such.

Speaking of which, I need to go chat with a faculty candidate.

Update:  In the comments, James suggested that student loans are relevant, even for fculty candidates.  In Reported Salaries by Law School, I noted a story in National Jurist that compared law school starting salaries, after adjusting for cost-of-living and student debt.

Comments

[James]

And don't forget that student loans don't change depending on where you live. Where the cost of living is lower, X hundred dollars a month in loan payments eats up a greater percentage of your income.