> I'm an academic and its difficult for me to imagine what the fuck deans do that is worth ~3-4 times as much as the people actually teaching and doing research. Fire them into outer space, I say.

I'm also an academic. To me, the primary role of a dean is to insulate me as much as possible from upper admin. I've had deans who are good at this job, and those who either aren't good at it, or think that their job is something else. The ones who are good at what I think their job is ... I'm not sure I'd want to see them get 3–4x my pay, but I'm definitely willing to pay a premium to have someone else deal with upper admin.