Assume the average salary for a college philosophy professor is $50,000. Suppose businesses decide they need in-house instructors to teach ethics to employees, and they begin hiring philosophy professors at a salary of $75,000. What are the short-term and long-term effects of this supposition?

As philosophy professors move into the corporate world, colleges would find that they need to increase salaries to maintain an adequate staff of these professors. Over the long term, more people would choose this profession as a career, and an increasing supply would ease the upward pressure on wages. Note that this answer assumes salary is the only factor that matters. In reality, we would need to consider benefits packages, job prestige, the type of work involved, etc. These issues are addressed in the next chapter.