I'm happy to report that this phenomenon has not leaked into the community college world. There's typically only a range of $20,000 or so between the highest and lowest paid tenured positions, and the same salary schedule applies to everyone, whether they're teaching philosophy, computer science, or nursing. I've been faculty union prez at my college for a couple years now, and that has come up in bargaining: "we need to pay more in the high demand fields (sotto voce--screw the humanities profs, we need attract more nurses!)". Frankly, I won't budge on that: the "star system" undermines worker solidarity and does little or nothing to enhance learning for the students. --Next step: eliminate the egregious pay gap between part-time and tenured faculty teaching the same courses-- Miles <<<<<>>>>>
cc i teach at introduced 'stipends' of $8000/yr for so-called 'critical needs' faculty 15 years ago, rationale was that admin people (some of whom *earn* - hahaha - much higher pay than everyone else) claimed hardship in attracting faculty in areas where folks could 'make more working in private sector', easy to guess areas that do and do not 'qualify' for higher income)...
we have no faculty union, i and several others attempted to organize for about a decade, never able to get sufficient numbers to join, tough state/area for unions in general, although our lack of success may say something about our abilities - or lack thereof - as organizers as well (only 6 of 28 cc's in state have bargaining units)...
absent specific/formal bargaining (there is admin initiated & appointed salary committee), we have managed to block so-called 'merit pay' thus far (although there is a 'teaching award' that functions similarly on one- time basis for those seleted), i'm always a bit amused that those who favor merit seem to believe that whatever it is that they are doing will warrant their receiving it, beyond that, they can never offer anything remotely looking like objective criteria...
we've also managed a couple of times to get slightly 'solidaristic' increases (when they occur) that provide bit higher percentage to those at low end...
guess point is that cc world varies greatly... mh