Academic Salaries on the Eve of Pandemic: Data From the AAUP

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The AAUP has provided some interesting salary data for the US academy.  It has no surprises.  De professionalization and the shifting of prestige from the academic to the administrative side of the house are nicely reinforced by the shift of salary increases from faculty to administrators.  As long as the academy continues to indulge the fantasy that administrators are worth more than faculty (presumably because they are fewer and hold more (and increasing authority) there is nothing that will change these trajectories.  

These valuations,. of course, are constructs, grounded in ancient societal presumptions about the value of work and its alignment with authority.  And of course as the authority and autonomy of faculty decrease, a diminution of salary (as the way one expresses value) is also to be expected. Tied to this is the premise that the lower the value of a worker the more likely she is expendable--high value (salaried) administrators, under this premise, are far less expendable (and less likely to be reduced in numbers in the case of financial difficulties, than are lower value (and more plentiful) teaching "staff. But that is exactly how the market has been solidifying for more than a generation. Data and links follow.

Faculty salaries show no signs of growth, according to the AAUP’s annual Faculty Compensation Survey. After adjusting for inflation, salaries for full-time faculty members at US colleges and universities were just 0.5 percent higher in 2019–20 than they were in the preceding academic year.

Following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, nominal salary growth remained below inflation (based on consumer price growth) until 2015–16, and it has remained flat ever since.

Access the full data results here. 

The AAUP collected data from 928 colleges and universities across the United States, including community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and major research universities. The 2019–20 survey covers almost 380,000 full-time and more than 96,000 part-time faculty members, as well as senior administrators at nearly 600 institutions. Complete analyses of this year's results will be presented in the upcoming Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2019–20, to be released in May. While we cannot predict the precise effects of the global coronavirus pandemic on the economic status of faculty, the annual report will review some of the lessons learned from previous economic crises.

Highlights of the data include the following:

• Gender differences. On average, faculty salaries for women were 81.4 percent of those for men. Despite shifts in distributions between men and women in terms of faculty rank, the gender pay gap has not budged over the last ten years. 
• Retirement benefits. Almost 97 percent of full-time faculty earn additional compensation in the form of contributions by the institution or state or local government toward retirement plans, with an average expenditure of 10.7 percent of the average salary of faculty who are covered.
• Medical benefits. About 94 percent of full-time faculty receive medical benefits in the form of institutional contributions to premiums for insurance plans, with an average expenditure of 11.9 percent of the average salary of faculty who are covered. 
• Part-time faculty pay. Average pay for part-time faculty members teaching a three-credit course section varies widely between institutional types, with average rates of pay ranging from $2,263 per section in public associate’s institutions without ranks to $4,620 per section in private-independent doctoral institutions. Within institutional categories, minimum and maximum pay rates span huge ranges. The AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey is the largest source of such data and draws attention to the appallingly low rates of pay offered to part-time faculty at many institutions.
• Part-time faculty benefits. Most faculty members who are paid per course section do not receive either retirement or medical benefits contributions. Overall, 38 percent of institutions contribute toward retirement plans for some or all part-time faculty, and 37 percent of institutions contribute to premiums for medical insurance plans. Among doctoral institutions, part-time faculty are more likely to receive benefits, with 52 percent of institutions contributing to retirement plans and 60 percent contributing to medical insurance plans.
• Presidential salary. Salary growth for college and university presidents continues to outpace growth for full-time faculty across all institutional categories. Presidential salaries at doctoral and master’s institutions increased 6 percent since 2018–19, while presidential salaries at baccalaureate and associate’s institutions increased 3 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Median salaries in 2019–20 range from around $230,000 for public associate’s institutions to nearly $800,000 at private-independent doctoral universities.

You can access the data tables and appendices here.

The AAUP Research Office