It isn't academic.

Speaking as someone with a Ph.D. in math who has spent most of his 30-year professional life unemployed and who can probably look forward to spending the rest of it unemployable, I was disappointed that "Where Ph.D.s pay off" in (SN: 8/7/04, p. 94) made no apparent effort to find points of view other than the researchers'. ALLAN ADLER, NEW YORK, N.Y.

People in government and industry tend to work all year. Academia employees, especially teachers, work only 34 to 35 weeks a year. That makes the academics' pay (about 70 percent of full-time pay) about right. RICHARD P. TAYLOR, MASON, TEXAS