Public Employee

You might wish to disparage my fair state by pointing out that the highest-paid public employee here is University of Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops. But you would have to disparage quite a few other states -- half the country, to be precise. According to this article at Deadspin, 26 states in the U.S. have a college football coach as their highest-paid public employee. A 27th state, Minnesota, has a tie between its football and basketball coaches.

Another 13 states pay a college basketball coach more than they pay any other public employee (Connecticut pays its women's basketball coach more than anyone else). The weirdos in New Hampshire give top dollar to a college hockey coach.

This leaves just ten states with someone other than a college sports coach as the highest-paid public employee. Alaska, Montana, Vermont and Delaware pay the most to a university president. The Dakotas and New York put the med school dean at the top, while Massachusetts gives that honor to the med school chancellor. Maine pays its law school dean the most.

I don't know what to make of the values of these states based on these figures -- I suppose you could say it means our society thinks too highly of college football and basketball coaches, and that Maine thinks too highly of lawyers. But what, then, do you make of Nevada, whose highest-paid public employee is a plastic surgeon on staff at a state medical school? The theory of value kind of breaks down there, because if there's any state that values plastic surgery too much, it's the one just to the west of Nevada.