First Person

Broken Promises

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person The Rejection Letter I Wish I Could Send If we had to make up a story for why you might be interested in our position, then interviewing you was too risky. Peer Review Hirings and Firings The new law school at the University of California at Irvine gets some high-profile hires ... and other appointment news. Ms. Mentor Does This Make Me Look Old? Advice on how best to dress, and act, when you look as young as your students. Career News Gone, and Being Forgotten Why are some of the greatest thinkers being expelled from their disciplines? Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By James Cole

Less than two years after arriving at what I had thought would be the perfect job for me in student affairs, I found myself flipping through the job ads once again.

I had found that perfect job at a small, private university, close to both my wife's extended family and my own. I would be an assistant vice president of student affairs -- a title that sounded very impressive for someone fresh out of graduate school.

If the title seemed impressive, the salary was not. But the administration made me three promises: that I could expect a cost-of-living raise every year (it had been that way for the past nine years); that if I performed well I could expect a merit raise after a year; and that the president would allow me to teach as many courses as I wanted to supplement my income.

At the time, I successfully repressed the memory of my adviser telling me never to take a job based on a promise of more money down the road.

I started the job in the summer of 2001. My rude awakening began that fall when, for the first time in almost a decade, the university announced that it would not pay cost-of-living raises to its employees. The administration assured us that that was most likely a one-year hiatus.

During the course of my first year we welcomed a new baby to our family, with all of the attendant expenses. A salary that had at first seemed only a little low now loomed significantly lower than what we needed to maintain a reasonable standard of living. I found myself paying particular attention to any talk of potential raises at work.

It did not help matters when I discovered that I was making less than the average assistant professor at my university. I did a little further research on salaries for comparable positions in student affairs in my geographical region and found that I was $10,000 to $15,000 dollars below the average.

It dawned on me then that student affairs might not be an institutional priority at my university. Perhaps I should have paid a little more attention to that when I applied.

The following fall, as the October deadline for cost-of-living raises came and went for the second straight year, I began to grow concerned for my family's welfare. We had already cut back our food and clothing expenses. Eating out now meant fast food once a week, and Wal-Mart became our favorite clothing store. I wondered if higher education was really the best place to work in order to raise a family.

The disappointments did not end there. Although I had been promised that I would have no problem making extra money as an adjunct instructor, I found out that in order to teach a course, I would have to develop one from scratch and take it through the campus-approval process.

My sense of the lack of appreciation for student affairs at the university was validated in the course-review meeting. I experienced the wrath of old-school faculty members who challenged any notions I had that active-learning experiences such as service learning had any place in the curriculum. Needless to say, the course I proposed was not approved and I was left without any supplemental income.

My frustration turned to anger when the university's trustees decided that, despite a struggling economy and a tight budget, the president still deserved a $20,000 raise. I wondered how he could justify such a hefty pay hike for himself when there had been no across-the-board salary increases that year for the rest of us, and all evidence indicated there would be no raises the following year.

I had now reached the point where it was difficult to hide my embarrassment about my institution. In spite of the fact that we admitted 99 percent of all applicants and charged them approximately $25,000 a year, I had always taken consolation in the fact that we were a rapidly improving institution constructing new buildings, raising more money, and taking care of our university "family." It became evident that the latter was no longer the case. If I truly was part of the family, it was time my household chores were rewarded with an increase in allowance.

Finally, the call came. The president asked to meet with me to discuss something too sensitive to reveal over the phone. He began just as I had hoped -- by recognizing that my work in the past year had been impressive. He said he believed that I deserved to be rewarded, and I thought, "I couldn't agree more!" It was a great disappointment, then, when he offered me a position in the development office that would pay me a few thousand dollars more.

He wanted me to know that his offer was a compliment to my hard work and accomplishments. I would have the opportunity to expand my professional horizons outside student affairs and make more money in the process.

No doubt he thought he was doing me a favor, but all he revealed was his lack of knowledge about his employees. If he had taken the time to get to know me, even on a surface level, he might have realized that I am committed to the field of student affairs. It is the topic of almost all of my professional articles and presentations. And now I was being asked to abandon my professional calling to raise money for a university I was not even sure I still fully supported.

I told the president politely that I didn't think the position was going to be a good fit for me. I asked if I might instead get a raise in my current position in student affairs.

Times were tough, the president replied, reiterating the standard university line that our employees had always been known for doing the work of two or three employees at other universities. I guess that was supposed to give me pride in our Herculean effort but it left me more dispirited than ever. If I did the work of several employees at other universities, shouldn't I at least be compensated similarly to one of them?

My final plea to "show me the money" was based on the salary data that I had accumulated on comparative positions at peer institutions. I suggested to my boss that if the university would not be giving across-the-board raises, at least I might qualify for a merit raise. My supervisor was sympathetic and agreed to lobby on my behalf.

Two weeks later I found out that the president was, indeed, going to award merit raises based on salary disparities within the institution, but since my case was based on comparisons with other institutions, I did not make the cut.

In the end, it turns out, it did not matter with whom I compared myself. The president reminded my supervisor that I had been given an opportunity to accept the development-office job and by failing to do so, I was, in effect, turning down my only chance at a raise.

In spite of the circumstances indicating it was time for me to leave, I had not mentally accepted that fact until one final insult. The president stopped by my office one day looking for my supervisor. Finding me alone, he apologized for being unable to find any money to offer me a raise. As he walked away I found myself appreciating his apology and his willingness to explain why his hands were tied. I thought that a personal apology was better than none at all.

I would have left the university with a much better taste in my mouth if the president had not remembered then why he came by the office. In the doorway, he turned around and asked me to tell my supervisor to get a price quote on new neon lighting to brighten a campus dining area.

When neon lighting takes priority over a committed and hard-working employee, it is an obvious sign of misplaced priorities.

Maybe it was because I was in student affairs, a field not always given the same respect as academic affairs. Maybe I had not performed as admirably as I thought I had. Maybe the university really was in such a tight bind that few raises could be given (despite the president's own $20K raise). I don't know.

What I do know is that I learned a lot in my two years at the university. And I took all of that knowledge with me when I landed a new job a year ago at a financially stronger institution, one that rewards most of its employees with equitable pay and has made it clear in ways large and small that my work is valued and appropriately compensated.