Tag Archives: AAUP

Faculty salaries worth less while presidents see real-terms rise

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Average faculty salaries in the United States increased at less than the rate of inflation for the second year in a row, according to a report released today by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) – but many college and university presidents saw substantial increases.

The overall increase in faculty salaries was 1.4% between 2009/10 and 2010/11, while the AAUP’s favoured measure of inflation, the consumer price index for urban consumers (CPI-U), increased by 1.5% during 2010.

The change in remuneration varied between categories of institutions, with faculty at public institutions receiving an average increase of just 0.9%, compared with 2.1% at private institutions. And, despite the recession, the average pay increase for presidents was twice that of faculty at public institutions and nearly three times higher at private institutions.

AAUP director of research and public policy John Curtis said he was particularly surprised that presidential pay continued to increase in real terms during the recession. “When other staff are required to take unpaid furloughs, salary and hiring freezes, and cuts to benefit programmes, it seems especially inappropriate for presidents to receive double-digit salary increases,” he told Naturejobs.

Curtis said presidential salaries seemed to be primarily driven by a type of prestige competition. “Each board justifies the president’s salary by paying more than a competitive institution,” he explained. “The cycle then just keeps repeating itself, ratcheting the salaries upward.”

The report, based on a survey of over 1,100 institutions, also showed that while the number of faculty members grew, most of the new appointments were in non-tenure-track positions.

What’s your reaction to the report? Should presidents get bigger pay increases than faculty? Are you considering a move to a private institution because of your pay? Share your thoughts below.

New squeeze on tenure in the United States?

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Hundreds of tenured staff are taking early retirement deals on offer at US universities, Times Higher Education reported last week. Universities are offering incentives of up to two years’ salary in a move that some see as a way to further reduce the proportion of tenured positions in academia, according to the report.

John Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors, says that although the incentives are not targeted at tenured staff, they may be contributing to tenure’s continuing decline. “Many of the tenured faculty members who are retiring, or who depart a particular university for a different reason, are not being replaced by a tenure-track colleague,” he told Naturejobs.

The proportion of faculty members in the tenure stream in the United States has been dropping for the past 40 years, falling from around three-quarters in 1970 to around 30% in 2007 (see ‘The changing face of tenure’). Curtis says that faculty members in limited-term or part-time positions are essentially ‘at-will’ employees, referring to the mode of employment that basically means staff can be fired at will without good cause, and are therefore wary of pushing their students too far or speaking out on controversial topics. He says universities moving away from the tenure system are failing to invest in their core mission of teaching and research.

What do you think? Have you been affected by the early retirement of a tenured colleague or professor? Are you struggling to find a tenure-track position? Do you live in a country where there is no tenure system? Post a comment to let us know your thoughts.