English professors maybe not, but for a lot of departments professors have good business options that should give them similar leverage, and it doesn't seem to help them at all.
Also at Stanford my impression is that a lot of the deans and provosts and whatnot are just professors that have been "promoted" (in the salary sense, at least), so I think in some cases they are even being pulled from the same pool of people.
lot of departments professors have good business options
Most professors are professors because they want to be professors, not for the money. I had several professors when I went to school who'd left business (and taken a significant pay cut) for a chance to teach and research, and I have a friend who's turned down job offers to almost double his salary just because he really likes the university world. Enough people are willing to 'pay' for the opportunity to work at universities by earning less money. Being an administrator at a university on the other hand isn't much different from being an administrator anywhere else and thus you have to pay them full market rates.
"but for a lot of departments professors have good business options that should give them similar leverage, and it doesn't seem to help them at all."
LOL. Maybe I'm just a cynical old fart, but from my experience with most professors, they couldn't get let alone hold a job in industry if their lives depended on it, at least not the ones who have been in academia for 15+ years including their PhD's. Many (most?) of these people are spoiled beyond repair by the freedom offered by their positions, even if they invariably think they have it so bad.
