According to JSOnline.com, Wisconsin’s college professors are relatively low paid, and the state often serves as a launch pad to bigger, out-of-state positions. Read …  

• Pay for full professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the lowest of the state's three doctoral universities, according to the 2008-'09 report on faculty salaries from the American Association of University Professors.
• …
• The findings came as no surprise to UW System officials. They have long bemoaned the pay of their professors, particularly at the public flagship university, where star faculty members have been recruited away by offers of much higher pay.
• "This is where the young up-and-coming professors come to learn the business, to get all the mentoring and cultivation and nurturing that goes into making them an associate professor or a full professor, and then they get cherry-picked by others," said UW spokesman David Giroux.

Check out the rest of the article for statistics, economic/recession concerns, and other depressing items. One interesting bit of information is that Wisconsin’s university system has $10 million at its disposal to sweeten salary offers for valuable professors who are offered competing positions. Kind of a “counteroffer fund" for the super smarties.