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Why Can't I Get a Raise?

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By Regina Barreca

Little did I know that in asking for a raise in salary, I would discover myself plunged into a new, indecipherable world that makes Alice's Wonderland look as organized as the Marine Corps.

In that world, it is hard to ask simple questions ("Please, sir, may I have some more?") and virtually impossible to get straight answers. The few answers I got were offered sotto voce, or in code, or practically in pantomime, so unwilling were people to explain how the fiendish process of getting a raise in academe really works.

I used to think that I was pretty clever at figuring out the whole academic bureaucracy. That was my first mistake. Hubris, no doubt, added exponentially to my downfall. Believing that I had the routine pretty well figured out after 13 years of full-time employment at the same institution, I had become cocky.

After all, I had achieved what one of my mentors at the City University of New York, Jane Marcus, had established as the sure sign of success for a feminist scholar: I got tenure before I hit menopause. I figured I knew which side my professional bread was buttered on. I'd published books, edited volumes, cofounded a scholarly journal, and secured a weekly column in The Hartford Courant. I was promoted to full professor of English before the age of 40. In the parlance of the neighborhood where I grew up, I had Done Good.

So why were the raises I had received over the last couple of years so small as to be gauged subatomically? The increases themselves didn't sound too bad until I figured out that, after taxes, deductions, and various other forms of penance, I was making $1.20 more each working day than I had the year before. The raise meant that I could now afford either a large coffee or a buttered bagel, but not both.

Permit me to point out that those were years during which I was waist-deep in accomplishment. I had won one of the university's highest teaching awards; I attended endless unsavory committee meetings; I had delivered innumerable talks to alumni and incoming students; I addressed groups of eerie, sleepy visitors, some of whom spoke no English and were prone to synchronized snoring -- let's face it, I did everything but deliver amusing speeches to the invertebrates used for experiments in the School of Pharmacy.

I had done it all in the spirit of being a good sport, part of the team, a member of the university community. Grateful for a full-time job and the privilege of teaching for a living, I was enormously eager to please and equally hesitant about asking for more money. Hey, if I'd wanted to make money, I could have gone into sales or the bootlegging of concert tapes -- both of which I figured paid more per hour, if you rounded up on commission and tips.

The realization that my latest raise amounted to less than a fourth grader's allowance was soon overshadowed by another discovery that led me to ask the dean of my college for a raise: I heard a rumor about an increase in pay awarded to a counterpart of mine in another department.

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed with disbelief, I decided to check on the veracity of the story. Knowing what I would suffer, I nevertheless committed the crazy-making deed that only academics at public universities can use for the purposes of self-flagellation: I looked up my salary and compared it with the salaries of others in my department (English), with those of people in other departments within my college (Liberal Arts and Sciences), and then -- just to torture myself further -- with the salaries in other schools (like education, law, and nursing) within the university.

Naturally I passed out, but the collective efforts of the compassionate staff members in the reference department of the library finally managed to revive me. I decided to call the dean's office and see if he'd be available for a friendly and informal meeting.

His secretary managed to find an opening in the dean's busy schedule, and I walked over to his office the next day. I was surprised to see two of my colleagues from the English department waiting in the hallway. None of us spoke about our reasons for being there, but few people hang around that hallway just for the fun of it.

Remember the scene from Dickens's A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge dies? His housekeeper, undertaker, and cleaning woman all meet at the rag-and-bone shop -- the pawnbroker's, in other words -- to sell off the goods that they have pilfered from Scrooge's estate. When they first come upon one another, they are uneasy. But then they break into laughter, join in verbally trouncing their erstwhile employer, and delight in their shared sense of conspiracy.

Well, the gathering outside the dean's office wasn't like that. My colleagues and I smiled and spoke, but we were as edgy as participants in a witness-protection program.

After what seemed like an endless and embarrassing wait, I was called into the dean's inner office. A nice enough fellow, the dean shook my hand and made it clear that he was surprised at my wanting to see him. I told him that -- given my research into the salaries of my peers, as well as my accomplishments and service in recent years -- I felt it was appropriate to ask for a raise.

Shall we say simply that the dean did not embrace my idea of having the administration fork over more dough? He looked at me in such a way as to make me want to run down to my basement and pull pillowcases over my head. He was astonished, it seems, by my lack of protocol.

Had I spoken to the chair of my department? No, but the chair, bless him, had always been enormously and enthusiastically supportive of me, and I assumed his encouragement at this juncture. Had I applied for other jobs at other universities? No, because I genuinely enjoy the university where I teach (and where, it should be noted, my husband also teaches). I did not want another job, I just wanted a raise.

With an air of sepulchral calm, the dean suggested that I go back to my unair-conditioned, cramped, one-electrical-outlet, cinderblock office (OK, he didn't go into detail) and regroup my forces in order to make a better case for drawing more heavily on the university's bank account.

While not actually dismissing me, he implied that my argument was insubstantial and unpersuasive. You might have seen me exit stage left, practically on all fours.

After 13 years at my university, am I supposed to write a letter explaining why I'm a good catch? What I wanted to write is something like this:

"You want me to get offered another job when I don't want another job? Am I supposed to act out the academic equivalent of some 1930's screwball-comedy plot, pretending to desire what I do not actually desire, to validate my worthiness for what I actually desire? Do you really want me to apply for a better job, go to interviews, meet campus officials, have lunches with people I'm desperately hoping never to see again -- to prove that I am valuable? Doesn't it prove, instead, that I am wholly unethical?" I wanted to sign it, "Seriously now," but I didn't have the nerve to sign it, let alone send it.

My department chair sent a letter -- a more reasonable and measured one than I would have been able to construct -- but I have not yet heard any official word concerning my request. I remain raiseless, in limbo.

Though we seldom speak about it, the accepted way for a perfectly reasonable professor to get an increase in salary at one college is indeed by going through the song and dance of being offered a higher salary at another college. To provide evidence of one's desirability, one must have an alternative offer in writing. That of course means that the raise-seeker must then betray the sincere, trusting college that made the good-faith offer. Should the pseudo-job candidate then be permitted to live happily ever after -- at least until another raise is due?

Does anybody have a problem with that scenario?

Maybe I'm not getting the procedure down on paper entirely correctly, but it is tough to tell -- because this apparently well-established (if not well-respected) tradition is rarely discussed in such raw terms. But I hear that it is the most effective way to increase one's take-home pay without either learning to play the ponies at Belmont or joining the staff of an escort service -- and the method described above, by the way, smacks of both of those activities.

After all, when you seek a raise by going after another job you don't actually intend to take, aren't you engaging in a little bit of gambling and a little bit of whoring?

Or am I just being girlish and sentimental?

Anybody out there willing to write me a letter, on official-looking stationery, offering me a better-paying job? I promise I won't take it.