Dive Brief:
- The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources’ 2014 survey on compensation in higher education was released Monday.
- Median base salaries for full-time faculty members are up by 2.1% at public colleges and universities and by 2% at private institutions, Inside Higher Ed reports.
- Another key finding is that gaps across disciplines are still quite large, with law, business, and engineering professors earning significantly more money than their colleagues in the arts and humanities, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Dive Insight:
Inside Higher Ed’s article highlights the concern with uneven pay distribution across fields, pointing out that the highest paid fields often require the least time to get a degree and get hired.
While the study looked at tenure track versus non-tenure track faculty in its comparisons, it did not count part-time, non-tenure track faculty, who, in many institutions, are pushing for greater bargaining power and higher pay. Adjunct professors at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., are currently fighting to form a union. Graduate students in New York City, for that matter, are also engaged in a push for more money as they work toward their degrees. For many trying to make a living in academia, it’s not an easy life.