Nothing will get a labor economist’s mental gears turning like the word “shortage.” At the very utterance of this term, Michael Podgursky’s ears perk up, his eyebrow rises, and he leans over his desk: “What do you mean by shortages?” It’s not that Podgursky isn’t accustomed to hearing the word—quite the contrary, actually. As a professor of Economics at MU, his query results from extensive research on education, a field that has fallen victim on numerous occasions to accusations of “shortages.”

Podgursky’s research aims to reform the single-salary schedule that provides salary increments according to a teacher’s years of experience as well as the number of college units and degrees earned. ““The whole compensation package for teachers, educators, and principals needs rethinking and needs to be thought about in a strategic way,” he says. “I think economics can help in thinking about the incentives, the structures, and efficient compensation design.”