[deong]

Tenure track positions are not at all hard to fill. There are 500 people applying for every one of them, and probably 350-400 of those people are completely qualified to do the job. But only ten of them are desirable, and a hundred other universities have those same ten people on the list.

Paying market rate won't help, because they're not leaving positions unfilled because they can't make an attractive offer. They're leaving positions unfilled because they're unwilling to live in a world where not every team gets Lebron James. It's better to do without than to not get your first choice, so that's what they do. If they were willing to pay $800k to fill a seat with whoever they picked as that "market rate" lecturer, they could have just hired the same guy for $120k -- he applied for the job and you rejected him.