The inflation in spending is what I was addressing. That second link shows that professorial salaries are one of the slower-increasing expenditures in a university's budget very nicely :-)

Inflation in spending is very misleading. I'm reminded of certain statistics that begin with "<x> minority is the fastest growing <demographic, religion, political affiliation, etc> in the country" ...well of course. When you're the minority, it's easy to be the fastest growing.

I relooked at that second link and the total instruction and research budget are only growing slightly slower than the total budget over the entire time period ie. a multiple of 2.17 vs 2.3