Dive Brief:
- The American Association of University Professors’ annual report shows a 1.4% overall increase in full-time faculty member salaries, when adjusted for inflation.
- According to Inside Higher Ed, the report counters the blame placed on faculty salaries for rising tuition costs in higher education by pointing out that, when adjusted for inflation, faculty salaries have gone down slightly since the Great Recession. The real reason for the tuition spike, it argues, has been the drop in state funding and eroding endowments.
- Faculty at private, nonreligious institutions make more than their peers in public institutions, who make more than their peers in religiously affiliated schools, and, even when looking at faculty with comparable rank, men make more than women, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
The AAUP report last year attacked bloated administrations at colleges and universities across the country. This year, it focused its reform arguments on state funding in an attempt to pull the blame off faculty for rising tuition costs. On average, state funding for higher education has gone down 16%, according to the report, but that average hides some striking examples at the high end. New Hampshire, for example, is spending 62% less. The report also argues that professors still make less than their peers in industry. If universities want PhD candidates in math to become professors and academic researchers rather than mathematicians, the logic goes, they can’t offer a substantially lower salary.
The highest average salaries this year are at Stanford, where full professors make $224,300.