From the issue dated April 19, 2002
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Faculty Salaries Rise, for NowAAUP reports a 3.8% pay increase, but warns that the future may be bleakBy ROBIN WILSON A new report on faculty salaries tells two tales. First, the good news for professors:
The American Association of University Professors publishes a report on the economic status of the profession each year, based on a survey of colleges and universities nationwide. The title of this year's report, "Quite Good News -- For Now," tells just how mixed the message is. Because the salaries analyzed in this year's report were set by June 2001, they don't reflect the economic downturn that has gripped the country for much of the last year. The 3.8-percent increase reported in the survey was well above the 1.6-percent inflation rate recorded between December 2000 and December 2001, and marks the fifth consecutive year in which the average pay of faculty members has risen. The average salary for all full-time faculty members in 2001-2 rose to $62,895, says the report. But the future does not look bright. Budgets for the next academic year are being set right now, "at a time when most states and localities have seen constant or even declining tax revenues," says the report. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor of economics and director of the Cornell University Higher Education Research Institute, says, "We're grateful whenever real earnings increase in academia because that increases the chance we can attract and retain high-quality people." But he isn't hopeful about what's to come. "My conjecture is it's going to start getting worse because public universities have been hit really hard by state budget cuts," he says. The healthy increase that professors received this year "is a temporary phenomenon," says Mr. Ehrenberg, adding that "as a long-term trend, things are likely to get worse." Just how much worse, however, is unclear. Daniel S. Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote the AAUP report, says: "I'm not very sanguine about what this report will look like for next year, particularly for public universities." The threat of a future decline in salaries -- particularly at public institutions -- comes at a time when the pay differential between public and private institutions stopped growing. Over the last two decades, salaries of private-university professors have outstripped those at public institutions, rising by 164 percent since 1981-82, compared with 137 percent for those at public universities. Academics have been concerned about the growing gap. According to this year's salary report, the pay differential has stabilized. It hasn't shrunk in the last few years, but it also hasn't continued to widen. "During the 1990s, the relative decline in public-sector pay was concentrated entirely in the first half of the decade," says the report. "Between 1996-97 and 2001-2, pay in both sectors rose at almost identical rates. These results are heartening for faculty in the public sector." But it adds: "The question remains whether public higher education has simply had a respite resulting from the flush state of budgets in the late 1990s, or whether its increasing relative impoverishment has finally stopped." If the recent economic downturn prompts renewed growth in the pay gap, that could cause all sorts of problems. "Eighty percent of our students are educated in public higher education," says Mr. Ehrenberg. "If salaries are going down, there will be a decline in the quality of those institutions." A dip in salary increases, he explains, is typically accompanied by other changes that aren't good for students: fewer full-time faculty members, more reliance on teaching assistants, and larger classes. Besides comparing salaries at public and private universities, this year's AAUP report says it is also important to look at what people outside higher education are earning. Compared with the salaries of those in other professions that require a similar amount of education, faculty pay lags behind. The report looked at the salaries of four groups outside academe: engineers, health professionals, lawyers, and scientists. "The earnings of all the other groups have consistently exceeded those of faculty," it says. On average, medical doctors earn 70 percent more, lawyers about 50 percent more, engineers roughly 30 percent more, and scientists about 10 percent more. The other professions have also seen larger increases on average than the professoriate has in the last few years. "There is little doubt that college and university faculty lost ground to other professionals beginning in the late 1990s," says the report. The AAUP report presents salary data in a variety of ways each year, including by rank. Full professors were paid an average of $83,282 in 2001-2, associate professors an average of $59,496, and assistant professors an average of $49,505. But the rate of pay varies widely at each level, depending on the type of institution. While full professors at doctoral-level universities averaged $94,788 in 2001-2, those at two-year colleges averaged $60,803. Assistants' Salaries Rise Most Across all sectors of higher education, assistant professors' pay rose the most in the last year, by 4.8 percent, compared with 4.2 percent for full professors and 3.8 percent for associate professors. "Given the relative tightness of academic labor markets, that makes sense," says the report. "The market for assistant professors is affected most strongly by alternatives outside academe, which were relatively plentiful until recently. To meet the competition for entry-level talent, without reducing quality, colleges and universities had to raise salaries." What is referred to as "salary compression" is definitely the biggest issue, says Rafia Zafar, director of African- and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. "To land new candidates, universities are increasing entry-level salaries. ... What happens is that a person tenured a year or two ago is making about the same, maybe a little more, than someone who was just hired." She says she doesn't personally suffer from compression, in part because she came in as an associate professor. But some associate professors who have been at Washington University for as many as seven or eight years have salaries that are very close to those of newly hired assistant professors. The report also distinguishes between all faculty members and "continuing" faculty members, those who remain at the same institution from one year to the next. The pay increase for "continuing" professors was 5 percent for 2001-2. As in years past, there continues to be a gap between the earnings of male and female professors. In 2001-2, the average male full professor earned $85,437, compared with $75,425 for the average female full professor. In this regard, says the report, academe is not much different from other sectors of the economy. "The picture is one of no huge differences in male-female pay among the professions," says the report. "Progress in enhancing female pay relative to that of males has been as lacking in our profession as in most others." The report this year was based on a survey of 1,433 institutions. It does not include data for medical-school professors, whose pay is typically much higher than that of most other faculty members. It also does not include salary information for part-time instructors. The report will be published in the March/April issue of Academe, the AAUP's bimonthly magazine. Copies of the issue can be purchased for $68.50 each from the AAUP at 1012 14th Street, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20005. The report is available on the AAUP's Web site (http://www.aaup.org/research/index.htm). THE BOTTOM LINE "Last year, we had a net increase of faculty for the first time in a decade. We had 'excellence money' to hire at the senior levels, and money to match offers from other institutions. Now, all that money is gone, plus more. We're expecting ... a decrease in our budget. The result for next year is that there will be no raises. Faculty are pretty depressed, because raises haven't been that high lately. Robert M. Fossum Professor of mathematics University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 36 years as a faculty member Salary: $90,969 (for nine months) *** "When we hire new professors, we tend to have to pay premium salaries, because of the competition from industry. It was especially difficult during the dot-com bubble. ... The way we deal with it is by not talking about it. Nobody talks about their salary, because we're aware that there's a disparity. It's more comfortable to pretend the discrepancy isn't there or is less than it is." Geoff Keunning Assistant professor of computer science Harvey Mudd College 4 years as a faculty member Salary: $50,000 to $70,000 (would give only range) *** "I just got my salary letter for next year, and I think I'm well paid. Considering I did not start out in this socio-economic class -- my parents didn't go to college -- as far as I'm concerned, I'm rich." How will she use her salary increase for next year? "Probably for the bathroom." Rafia Zafar Director of Africanand Afro-American studies and associate professor of English Washington University in St. Louis 13 years as a faculty member Salary: $65,000 to $85,000 (would give only range) *** "I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. I could make a lot more money outside academe, but I do not work here because of salary. Pepperdine is a Christian school. I came to Pepperdine because I felt called to be here." Cindy L. Miller-Perrin Associate professor of psychology Pepperdine University 10 years as a faculty member Salary: $75,149 *** "In Virginia we are in a desperate situation. There were no raises last year and no raises for this year. Faculty morale here, I would have to say, is low. There are families concerned about paying for college for their kids. ... I personally feel well-treated, but I'm stuck without a raise this year." Robert M. Grainger Professor of biology University of Virginia 26 years as a faculty member Salary: $129,000
-- Piper Fogg and Robin Wilson
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education