Comments on Faculty Salaries Up 4%

• Real v. nominal
• Posted by Econmike on March 10, 2008 at 7:25am EDT

• I, too, will recieve a raise of about 4% this yar. But the number is misleading as it is unadjusted for inflation. If you check the BEA website you will see that year-over-year inflation is running 4.3%. This will be the third year in the row that my average raise will result in a loss in real income. As academics we have the best job in the world; I just wish we were not paid less and less each year to do our work.

• salary increases and inflation
• Posted by SWNID on March 10, 2008 at 8:20am EDT

• As a member of a faculty that has received only one salary increase in the last three years, I understand the pain of salary increases that don't keep up with inflation. Further, as a member of the lowest-paid discipline in higher ed, theology and religious vocations, I suspect that I can claim greater vulnerablility than many to the ravages of inflation.

  Still, I can't in good conscience complain about salary increases that fall short of the inflation rate. For one, I respond to rising prices by redirecting my spending toward cheaper products and services. When food prices go up, I tend to buy cheaper foods. When fuel prices go up, I drive less and turn down the thermostat. Only a mindlessly rigid lifestyle prevents me from cushioning the effects of inflation by responding to the marketplace rationally.

  Second, the present round of inflation reflects things that I want to encourage. I'm glad that gasoline prices are higher because I want people to drive less and take public transportation more. I'm glad that food prices are higher, since right now the rise in prices is driven mostly by the improved incomes of people in the developing world. Why should I be isolated from those effects so that I can continue to consume more than my share of the world's resources? Or why should I expect to keep up with inflation if others do not? And if all kept up with inflation, how could the market adjust demand to fit supply except with hyperinflation?

  Third, I am very conscious that over recent years the tuition paid by my students has risen much faster than the general rate of inflation. I can complain about where some of that money has gone, but in the end I know that an increase in my salary has to come from tuition dollars paid by people no less subject than I to inflationary pain.

• Posted by Author, No Sucker Left Behind on March 10, 2008 at 8:25am EDT

• After reading the comment above, I feel a need to remind everyone that BusinessWeek reports that inflation-adjusted salaries for new college grads have dropped by 9% since 2000. So many professors still have it better than their customers.

• perspective
• Posted by instructor on March 10, 2008 at 8:40am EDT

• Thanks for adding a response here that acts as a voice of reason. It's easy to complain, but when our salary issues are put in perspective (to students, to developing nations), it reminds us that, yes, we'd all like to get paid more, but we are pretty lucky to just get paid. And there's a lot that we can do to make that salary go further if we just adjust our lifestyle.

  As an instructor (no asst professor status yet) in one of the lowest paying fields, these words helped me stop feeling sorry for myself.

• salary apologists
• Posted by Dr Dad on March 10, 2008 at 9:05am EDT

• In reference to the comments above, Yes it is possible to cut back by eating cheaper foods (Ramen anyone?) and yes, there are people worse off in the world than me, and yes, students are paying higher and higher tuitions BUT (and it is a big butt) this does not change the fact that the incoming salary of newly hired faculty members continues to increase while those who are already working are decreasing. So I'm still going to demand (mostly unsuccessfully I admit) that my university does the right thing by me in terms of salary. Why are academics so so willing to accept this kind of crap! One's salary does NOT equate with one's worth BUT universities will continue to cheap out on faculty salaries (especially if you are not in the business/law/medical fields...check out the disconnect between those areas and Arts and Sciences) as long as they thing they can get away with it........

• We are professionals, after all, not recent college graduates
• Posted by Fartig on March 10, 2008 at 9:30am EDT

• We are educated people, so let's stop making false analogies. We are not recent grads. I have a Ph.D and have been teaching full-time for two decades. I am not a developing country nor do I live in one. If I did, chances are that I would be treated with more respect because I would be viewed as a resource and not as yet another service provider in a university whose student center is a mall.

  It is not a question of just grinning and bearing it, of playing the "glad game" (gee, it's bad but it could be worse). There is no reason why any of us should accept the increasing de-professionalization of our work. There is no reason why I should accept a standard of living that is CONTINUOUSLY declining, why I should be content with a salary that has, for the past decade, never risen above 3.9% per annum and for three years did not rise at all.

  Yes, I would like to see folks using less gas. But I do want to be the only one on my block who has to think twice about filling up my fuel-efficient vehicle. And a hybrid--which I'd like to own--is way beyond my means.

  This is about deprofessionalization. This is about the fact that our legislatures want to keep tuition down by keeping our raises down and not raising taxes, so that we are effectively subsidizing our students' education. As long as we take it on the financial chin; as long as our administrators and law-makers are more interested in building new buildings (and thus helping local contractors); as long as we are not able to make our case because our college presidents are more worried about the investors (who ever they are) and the other "stake holders" (and we, it seems are not "stake holders") we will face ever diminishing returns, both in terms of our salaries and in terms of our place in the university.

• Posted by sk on March 10, 2008 at 10:00am EDT

• Look on the bright side -- this tells about those that have jobs, not those that have given up looking.

  It also says nothing about 2 yr colleges, and nothing about TAs, adjuncts.

  At best, this is a very incomplete picture.

• Tough Year for Workers
• Posted by John McDonald on March 10, 2008 at 10:50am EDT

• A lot of private companies are doing away with bonuses this year and holding salaries flat. Basically, that's a pay cut when the cost of living is going up more than usual. Of course, this doesn't include all the job cuts (including >100,000 private jobs in Feb.)

  As bad as 4% sounds in the current price climate, its better than any industry perhaps other than medicine. Education is still adding jobs overall - that alone makes it a "strong" career.

  Well, there are probably some CEOs who will do better in 2008 than they did in 2007, but that story is few and far between...Its promising to be a great year for politicians, too.

• faculty salaries
• Posted by Joe Berry at U of IL & Chicago COCAL on March 10, 2008 at 11:20am EDT

• Once again we get a survey of "faculty" salaries that says not a word about the pay of the majority of "faculty", the contingents, adjuncts, precarious, term, "temporary", nontenure track, etc. etc. Not surprising that we are invistible to higher ed HR departments -- they often forget to pay us as well.

• SALARIES
• Posted by Alex on March 10, 2008 at 11:30am EDT

• I cannot believe that such highly educated people do not know how to take care of their profession. Don't we learn from the Doctors and Lawyers about how they raise their prestige by higher salaries, limited enrolments, and legislature pressures? Just because we have jobs we enjoy does not mean that we have to be "martyrs". Keep complaining, keep the pressure on the fat pigs of university administrators and do not forget the old saying "if you are so smart, how come you aint' rich?"

• Posted by John on March 10, 2008 at 11:30am EDT

• It is time for tenured faculty who continue to be productive, who continue to teach a full load, and who continue to do the service so entry-level faculty can get courses off and spend all their time preparing tenure cases (treatment most faculty who were promoted over the past 20 years did not receive), it is time for senior faculty to work the rule. Teach the courses assigned, stop advising graduate students, end all committee work, stop chairing search committees. Just teach and work on your own research. Do what you must for your paycheck and for what you can take with you to another university. Do nothing else until the corporate university adjusts our salaries for inflation and salary compression. Let overpaid administrators talk the newbies, with those great entry salaries and time off and research startup funds, into keeping the lights on.

• Retired baseball players
• Posted by Befuddled on March 10, 2008 at 3:40pm EDT

• I remember when baseball players complained about their salaries too. The ball clubs make a lot more than we do, sniffle, sniffle. Did all the former baseball players become faculty? As a lower man on the totem pole it sounds like the same whining to me. I hope I get a raise at all in the next 18 months let alone one this year. Of course that’s compounded by the fact that faculty already make more than I do. There is a reason I don't attend professional sporting events.

• Teaching Load
• Posted by Maggie V. at For-Profit, Inc. on March 12, 2008 at 5:35am EDT

• I'm an associate prof. at a for-profit university. According to these stats I pull just under the average associate prof. salary. No big deal. Except that that's for not 24, not 30, but 45 (count'em, 45) credit hours per year. I'm much, much better off than adjuncts, yet I'm another example of how the academic workforce has been racing to the bottom the last 3 decades or so. No, it's not Econ. 101. It's political, in the sense of power relations.

  I want to do research. I may have some things to say and some talent with which to say them. Yet when my institution says it's a "teaching institution," it ain't kidding. It can't make a profit if I have summers off from teaching. No real vacation. The kind of trend back toward wage slavery that's been going on everywhere for some time now. And it's playing hell with my effectiveness as a teacher (though I'm still pretty good).

  There's a lot of teaching needs to be done. I'm happy doing a substantial amount. Yet the System has evolved to one in which research is riding on the back of teaching, I humbly submit. Maybe the teaching part of what professors do should be paid more than the research part?

  Forget I said that. If that were the case, though, I wonder if the System would then be "enabling" the for-profits to exploit those of us "fortunate" enough not to be adjuncts. Remember, the corporate lobbyists who put the squeeze on higher ed. to downsize tenure lines, etc. are also creating a space for their for-profit buddies to glean all those "failed" Ph.D.s, many who would otherwise make valuable contributions--under usual and customary working conditions, & for usual and customary charges for their services--as both teachers and scholars.