A group of Canadian academics have found a unique way to protest at the extraordinary pay being offered for the next President and Vice Chancellor at University of Alberta.
Seeing the $400,000/year salary on offer, 56 academics currently working at the university have applied for the job. But they’re applying in groups of four.
The protesters’ logic is that the salary would be a very comfortable amount for the four of them to split, and they’d do a much better job than any single person, even if it was just because they had so much more time to dedicate to the work.
You can see the full story over at Slate.
Witter Daily 
Fantastic!
I’m not sure they’d actually do better though… Have you ever seen a group of academics trying to agree on an approach to something? 😛
A lot of the high paid position e.g. CEOs, would benefit if the position was filled in this way but as Daniel has noted you still need to be sure that all the skill sets required for the job are present in the combined applicant. And if there is a screw-up, do you sack all four?
You’d absolutely sack all four if there’s a screw up. It would be hard to manage, but that would be an issue for the group to sort out before I’d give them a job. They’d be welcome to propose something weird and wonderful like this, but would have to be very clear about how they’d make it work, including proving that they could take shared responsibility for their agenda without too many explosions.