Re: The Scientist's Annual Life Sciences Salary Survey.[1] Within the academic sector, more prestigious institutions usually pay higher salaries to their faculty than do less prestigious institutions. For instance, full professors at Harvard University earn twice as much as their counterparts at the University of South Alabama (see Figure 1). However, prestigious universities are not clustered in any particular geographical area. If salaries are adjusted for geographical differences in cost of living, the high correlation between professor salary and university reputation vanishes (Figure 2). For instance, full-professor salaries at the University of Hawaii (Manoa), which are very appropriate to the school's reputation in actual values (Figure 1), are rather low after correction for cost of living (Figure 2). In contrast, salaries at the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana) are much higher than expected for the school's reputation after adjustment for cost of living.