This idea is separate and distinct from the locality based living wage model.
From
1993 data (likely out of date):
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/p70-51/table02.txtWe learn that a Professional degree offers on average $5,534 per month income.
A high-school degree offers on average $1,380 per month income.
The ratio of high-school to professional years spent in education is approximately 13:21 (for dentists, as an example), or reduced, approximately 3/5, which converts to about 60%. This means that a high school graduate, while they spend 3/5 of the time that a professional does in school, they earn roughly 1/4 of what an average professional does.
If we assume that education leads to higher income, this data illustrates a vast disparity of deferred compensation later in life per hour spent in class. In a system that rewards what one knows with income in the earning years, we can conclude that high-school students are not being taught necessary
survival skills as efficiently as professionals are.
I would prefer to see a world where hours sat in a classroom seat is compensated similarly amongst all. This should be in line with the hypothesis that learning's lack of compensation can only be rationalized as fair if later in life that learning results in deferred compensation. Otherwise learning is a type of financial slavery for all except an arrogant few.
There are several ways of remedying the Professional-High School pay disparity:
One is to reduce compensation at the high side, roughly in line with time spent in education achievement: in this scenario we see compensation for professionals reduced to around 5/3 of what high-school graduates earn, roughly 166% instead of the current 400%.
Another way is to raise minimum wages to living wages. According to the time-spent-in-school model, a commensurate wage for 13 years of schooling (K-12) should correspond to about $3,320 per month, roughly $19.30 per hour.
Another tactic to bring fairness to the hours spent in class doing the bidding of teachers in the current model is to reduce the current K-12 grade school years (13 total) to a ratio of 1/4 instead of 3/5 relative to the professionals, meaning that K-12 years are reduced to a total of approximately 5.5 years.
Any one of the three above brings current pay disparities into time-spent-in-a-seat parity with those of professionals, a higher paying class.