Senior-level administrators are seeing their largest salary gains in five years. The median base pay for salaries for the year is up 4 percent this year, according to data released today by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. That compares to increases in the previous four years of 3.5, 3.3, 2.5 and 3.5 percent.

CUPA-HR conducts its survey annually, releasing data by position, but not by individual institution. In a reversal of last year, public institutions outpaced privates in all job categories. The largest differences were in executive positions, where the median salary increased by 4.9 percent at public institutions and 4.4 percent at private institutions.

While most of the data concern salaries, CUPA-HR also provides some information about other issues. Some details available this year:

• The median length of service for chief academic officers is only three years. Andy Brantley, chief executive officer of CUPA-HR, said he was concerned that this was too short a period of time, given that "individuals in these critical positions guide the most important areas of campus, and frequent turnover can be disruptive to the entire campus community."
• Women are making progress in winning key administrative jobs. Women now hold more than one-third of all jobs as provosts/chief academic officers and as deans of arts and sciences. There has also been notable progress in deanship positions where men still dominate. For example, in the last five years, the percentage of deans of engineering who are women increased to 11.5 percent, from 5.8 percent.

For selected positions, CUPA-HR released data broken down by sector. It is important to note that base pay, which is reported here, is only part of a total compensation package, which especially for presidents and selected other top administrators may include substantial other compensation.

Median Base Pay by Sector, 2006-7

For many other positions, CUPA-HR released a median base pay for all institutions,  but not by sector. In many cases, the range across sectors is similar to that for the above positions.

Median Salary by Position, 2006-7

An executive summary of the salary report is available free and the full report may be ordered on CUPA-HR's Web site.