Teachers are overworked and underpaid too

I'm not sure about who the "too" refers to, but just about everyone these days claims to be overworked and underpaid. I just grabbed these statistics (for the U.S.A.).

teacher $43,000
assistant professor $45,000
police officer $46,000
accountant $53,000
department store buyer $58,000
architect $60,000
computer systems analyst $71,000
engineer $75,000
attorney $83,000
full professor $84,000
doctor $120,000

Apart from the fact that teachers get less than people in other comparable professions, the massive hike from assistant professor to full professor is weird. I'm not sure how the American system works: in Britain you have junior lecturers (a.k.a. office boys), senior lecturers, professors, heads of departments, deans and various obscure things like fellows and chairs. In Turkey we have a totally incomprehensible system. Both have intricate systems of pay differentials, but I don't think in either system a professor earns almost twice as much as an ordinary lecturer (on the other hand, in Turkey there is a massive difference between state and private schools - I earn about three times what I'd get in a state institution).

Anyway, it shows that Microsoft can occasionally come up with something useful - the figures are from a good article at the Microsoft Encarta site.