Category Archives: Salary-and-benefits
April 23, 2013, 2:38 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
Sarah shared with her doctoral-program mentors the joyous news of her first job offer from a relatively small teaching institution. Several of them said, “What are you countering to their offer?” She was surprised, figuring she should merely be appreciative of the offer itself.
They started peppering her with items she should ask for. Relocation expenses? A research assistant? A library allowance? Travel money? Those were not that surprising as she thought about it, but then they pressed on: a full-time, tenure-track position for her spouse? An interest-free loan for a house or down payment? Deferred compensation? A two-day teaching schedule? As they continued, she expressed her hesitancy that she might overreach and end up undermining the offer, or at least ruin the start of her career. One of the mentors pressed her hard: “Look: they want you; make demands. A good administrator will…
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April 17, 2013, 1:14 pm
By Allison M. Vaillancourt
In the last month or so, I have observed three tragic career train wrecks. In each case, I looked on in horror and what seemed like slow motion as otherwise smart people demonstrated profound naïveté about how to navigate their careers.
As I watched the events unfold, I found myself wanting to shout, “No, no. Don’t do it!” But in each case I arrived too late to be helpful. I was able to diagnose what had caused the derailment, but I was too late to the scene to prevent the damage.
Case 1 was a situation in which a very talented person was encouraged to apply for a job she didn’t want in order to use it as leverage to increase her salary. When she succeeded in getting an offer, she turned to her current department and said, basically, “I’ve received this great new offer. What will you offer to keep me?” The response in this case was, “It would be wrong to hold you back; best of…
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April 11, 2013, 3:05 pm
By Gina Stewart
Many years ago, I had dinner with my wise friend Sheila Campbell, who used to run a very successful advertising business in Washington, D.C. She related this story to me.
When we hired at the agency, we interviewed candidates, decided which one we wanted to hire, and then asked for that person’s salary requirements. If we could afford the requested salary, we would make an offer. One year when I was reviewing the books, I realized (to my growing horror) that I was paying men much more than women for performing the same work. But it was what they had asked for … . So I went to each underpaid employee, offered a salary adjustment, explained why, and said to each, ‘This is probably the only time in your life that someone else will do this. From now on, you have to know what you are worth, and ask for it.”
So how do you know what you are worth in the marketplace? Most professional and…
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December 4, 2012, 2:23 pm
By Allison M. Vaillancourt
As hiring season begins in earnest, my university is bringing together search-committee members to discuss strategies for reaching prospective candidates and showing them why the University of Arizona might be a good choice. One topic keeps surfacing at these meetings. It has to do with how to let candidates know about our family-friendly benefits and our willingness to assist their partners in finding employment.
Everyone has been well schooled in the “Do not ask about children or marital status during the interview” rules, so there is sometimes hesitance to let candidates know that we might have resources they need. While search committees are often hesitant to talk about tenure delays for new parents or support for accompanying partners, candidates, for their part, are reluctant to ask about programs and services that might make the difference between accepting or not accepting our…
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October 23, 2012, 2:41 pm
By Gene C. Fant Jr.
With academe suffering from a number of disruptive forces these days, the pressure is on to find innovative ways to handle budgets, including new strategies for faculty compensation. I heard a senior administrator recently say that his institution had moved to embrace full pay parity. In this paradigm, faculty members of equal qualifications and years of experience are paid the same wages, regardless of academic specialty. An accounting professor is paid the same as a nursing faculty member as an English faculty member as a chemistry faculty member. He said that this plan reflected his campus’s commitment to fairness and community.
This topic has come up frequently lately in online discussions and at conference-table chats. As a chief academic officer, I cannot imagine how hard it is to recruit for high-demand fields when the salaries are necessarily compressed relative to other…
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January 30, 2012, 11:43 am
By Eliana Osborn
We’ve found a forum here and elsewhere online to finally open some conversations about contingent faculty issues. On individual campuses it is hard to find time or opportunity to talk through these things in any meaningful way. At the New Faculty Majority Summit this weekend we’ve tried to shy away from the airing of grievances, no matter how valid, and focus on ways to move forward. That’s where I’ve been stuck–knowing the problems is just the beginning and I haven’t known how to do more.
A theme for the NFM is the title of this post and something that I think we need to emphasize in any discussion with the broader public about why they should care about our problems; after all, jobs are tough to find all over. Why does contingent faculty even matter? It matters not just to me and you and the other 800,000 non-tenure-track faculty across America. It matters to everyone who will take…
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January 13, 2012, 1:03 pm
By Eliana Osborn
I’ll be attending the first meeting of the New Faculty Majority Foundation at the end of the month. Adjunct or part-timers are the majority of those teaching college courses around the country, and we have very little control over our lives and careers. The NFMF is an attempt at organization and finding common goals to advance the status of we adjuncts.
I know what I think and what my experience has been over the decade I have worked as an adjunct English professor at one institution, but I’d like to hear from you about what issues you think need to be addressed first and foremost. The more I engage in the Chronicle community, the more I realize that I am not alone in my challenges as a non-tenure-track employee. I’d like to bring to the table at the NFMF gathering some of what I’ve learned from you readers.
So what is most important to you in terms of better adjunct treatment?…
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December 13, 2011, 2:36 pm
By Julie White
I recently received the November/December issue of the American Federation of Teachers’ publication, On Campus, and opened to the headline: “Community Colleges More Satisfying for Female STEM Faculty.” According to the article, Ohio University researchers found that women make up nearly half of the faculty members at community colleges who teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses (compared with 33 percent who teach such courses at four-year institutions) and that there is greater salary equity between men and women at community colleges.
My first thought was, “Yes! Fantastic! It’s wonderful that women are doing so well at community colleges!” Of course, my next thought was, “Wait a minute. Given that community colleges are at the low end of the prestige scale, and that our faculty are focused more on teaching and service than on scholarship, this study is…
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November 10, 2011, 3:52 pm
By Eliana Osborn
I wrote recently about missing class for a medical emergency. Several commenters replied that they build an extra day into their semester just in case such a thing happens. Great idea to make sure all the content is covered.
If you’ll remember, on the night I missed class, I put coursework up on Blackboard for my students to do without me. I did not need a substitute instructor in the classroom. But just this week I got a notice in the mail letting me know that my pay would be docked for the night I missed class.
As an adjunct faculty member, I do not have health insurance or sick leave. If I am not in class, I don’t get paid. Even though I had a contingency plan and my students had a night of coursework, albeit self-directed, I don’t get paid. Yet if I’d sat in the back of the classroom doing nothing while students did the activities I’d assigned, I would have been paid.
I’m a …
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September 7, 2011, 10:48 am
By Allison M. Vaillancourt
Do consider yourself quarrelsome, difficult, and stubborn? If so, congratulations; you may be earning more than your more cooperative and well-mannered colleagues. That’s the conclusion revealed in “Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last?,” a study soon to be released in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Timothy Judge of the University of Notre Dame, Beth Livingston of Cornell University, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario looked at who makes the most money and found that disagreeable men win out over everyone else.
I fell into a funk for several days after reading their paper because while I may not consistently practice kindness (as Chronicle blog commenters seem to delight in reminding me), I admire it in others very much. That made it all the more depressing to learn that nasty men earn up to 18 percent more than other men and …
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