Audiology

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Show Me the Money - A Commentary on the issue of the Au.D

Call me crass, call me cynical, call me mercenary, but you know, If I were to get an Au.D, I'd expect to make a whole lot more money than I am presently earning with a masters degree. My reasoning is simple: more education should equal more income. After all, anyone else who is called "Doctor" makes considerably more money than I do.

I learned from an internet site that you can estimate a person's income by observing the type of car they drive. It's a pretty complicated formula so I won't go into the mathematical details here. Based on this formula I have collected the following data. I observed the vehicles driven by 6 doctors, 6 dentists, 6 vets, and 6 optometrists. There were remarkable similarities within each group, rendering the mean, median, and mode income for each group to be almost identical. Most doctors (general practitioners) drive Mercedes C520 SUVs. Thus, their average income is comfortably into six figures. (Specialist physicians lean more towards large Mercedes sedans-C class, putting their average income much higher.) Dentists, who typically drive Lexus 400 series sedans or Lexus 400 SUVs also comfortably earn six figures. Veterinarians, who typically favor full-size Dodge diesel pick ups are in the high 5 figure range. Optometrists, who tend to be evenly split between older Mercedes station wagons or newer Mini Cooper S's, are also in the upper 5 figure range. The long-and-short of it is that they all make a lot more money than I do. That's no surprise. We've long known that if you have the title of doctor, you make pretty good money.

I drive a 10-year-old minivan. That slots me, accurately, into a very modest income category, grouped along with teachers, nurses, OTs and PTs. Sadly, If I get an Au.D. I'll still be driving a 10-year-old minivan. Again, I'll still be slotted into a very modest income category. [Incidentally, in the geographical region that I live in, there are many mill workers and loggers who drive full-size diesel pick-ups, thus, accurately, pegging them into the same income bracket as Veterinarians].

That brings us to the following fundamental unfairness. Presently, when I go out for drinks with friends, none of us who have the title "Dr.," we all pay for our own (modest-priced) drinks. If I had the title of doctor, my friends would expect me to pay for some of their drinks, assuming that my income would be much larger than theirs. Yes, I could guide them into making calculations based on the type of car I'm driving but: 1) most of my friends are, at least to some modest degree, arithmetically challenged (most often evidenced by losing track of how many drinks they have consumed); and 2) most of my friends don't believe me when I tell them stuff like this.

It's a sad, sad fact, that an audiologist with an Au.D., won't make any more money. In public health, there is no provision in our pay grids for doctorates. In private practice, you can't charge any more for your service just because you may have a doctorate. In fact, the competition down the street might be a Hearing Instrument Practitioner as opposed to an audiologist and he/she could have the same income.

So I say, "why bother?" For the cachet? For the love of knowledge? For the feeling of accomplishment? Heck, I get a satisfactory feeling of accomplishment after a good nap. If I want knowledge, I'll read something specific. I don't need to complete a comprehensive program that is going to contain a lot of stuff I don't need to know, and will soon forget, in order to gain a small proportion of knowledge that I can use and hang on to.

Cachet? If I were working for myself, I admit I would feel a bit of cachet were I to have the title of doctor. If I were to work for someone else, either in public health or private practice, the employer gets the cachet. The employer gets to put a Mini Cooper on display for the cost of an old minivan. Generally speaking, cachet without the money to go with it, is false and hollow.

I'll admit that I'm more of a whiner, than a problem-solver. Whining is easier. I'll leave it for the problem-solvers to try to fix things. We need problems-solvers to shake up our field and: 1) see if our salaries and benefits can get boosted up a bit--considering that we have masters degrees, we could be doing better; and 2) we need to urge employers to show more appreciation for the Au.D. degree. I know a lot of audiologists are going to hate me for saying this, but all the audiologists who are earning their Au.D.s and then continue to work for the same salary as prior to the degree, are doing our profession something of a disservice.

We are in the health field, as are SLPs. We want to help people and because of our good intentions we've often put client benefit (or even employer benefit) above our own personal gain. Or put in other words, we've been softies for years.

In closing, to Au.D. or not to Au.D?--show me the money!

Luigi Calvori, M.Sc., Aud (c)

Luigi is an audiologist in British Columbia working for a national dispensing chain.

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