First-ever survey of professors' salaries in Arab region released

London, 14 January 2014 – For years, even decades, there has been discussion about Arab public-university professors not getting paid enough, but the actual numbers were often impossible to come by. Today, Al-Fanar Media, an editorially independent publication dedicated to covering higher education in the Arab region, releases the first-ever comprehensive survey on public-university professors' salaries.

After months of compiling statistics and information on public-university professors' salaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Al-Fanar Media releases the results of its survey with the hope that it will provide the facts for an informed discussion.

According to the survey, public-university professors in much of the Arab world have great difficulty climbing up into the middle class.

“This survey gathered enough data to show what has long been complained about but not necessarily verified -- that professors in the Arab world overall do not make enough, despite their extensive education, to live a middle-class lifestyle, making teaching at a public university an unattractive profession,” Al-Fanar Media reported.

Among the 12 countries surveyed, public-university professors' salaries in Lebanon and the Gulf nations were the highest and could reach as high as $90,000 a year, while Yemen's and Morocco's were the lowest with their highest-paid academics earning no more than $30,000.

For complete figures on how much public-university professors make in the Arab region, please click here for the graphic.