New Census data and salary survey results show significant pay gaps within post-secondary teaching positions—across faculty types and between genders.
Census data released last week illustrates the gender pay gap among men and women in the same professions. The 2013 data, the latest available, shows men consistently earn at least 20% more than their female colleagues. For post-secondary teachers, specifically, the data shows women make about 85% of male salaries, on average.
Andy Brantley, CEO of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, said institutions are likely to move closer to parity in coming years as older male professors retire and stop skewing the data. CUPA-HR conducts annual salary surveys for college administrators and faculty members of all types. Brantley said there is much less disparity between genders for people recently hired to faculty positions.
“There are a lot of programs in place to make sure that disparity by discipline and rank is something they pay attention to,” Brantley said.
Campuses may need to be more intentional about the way they pay and budget for adjunct professors, however. The 2015 data collected by CUPA-HR for adjunct faculty members is not publicly available yet, but there is significant unrest on some campuses over the increasing reliance on these employees to teach courses. Adjuncts are paid a set rate per course and do not get any additional benefits from employment.
On many campuses, administrators have looked to adjunct appointments to fill gaps caused by shrinking revenues, including state and federal aid. The shift is increasingly being seen as exploitative, and adjuncts at colleges and universities across the United States are forming unions to claim more bargaining power over wage negotiations.
Historically, adjunct appointments have been reserved for faculty members teaching one or two courses. It was an explicitly part-time arrangement. As universities have dealt with funding cuts and pressures to keep tuition costs down, they have hired adjuncts to teach up to four or five courses—a full-time load—but have continued paying them based on the part-time model.
“That’s where many campuses have tripped up,” Brantley said. “Where is the line between when a campus should consider someone an adjunct versus a full-time instructor?”
The latest survey data from CUPA-HR highlights the median salaries of full-time faculty members, which are up just about 2% from last year. The organization will release more information about the pay of adjunct professors in the coming months once it analyzes and organizes that data.
The disparity between the lowest-paid adjunct professors and the highest-paid tenured faculty—or the highest-paid university presidents, for that matter—is increasingly finding itself a target for critics. Last year’s American Association of University Professors annual salary report, the latest available, points to frozen or slow-growing faculty salaries at the same time as double-digit raises for presidents.
While Brantley defends the pay of higher ed presidents, comparing it to the compensation for CEOs of similarly sized organizations in the private sector, he does encourage colleges and universities nationwide to assess their policies toward adjuncts.
“There’s a degree of fairness that has to be infused into this for every campus,” Brantley said, “so that the majority of adjuncts do feel that they’re adequately compensated.”
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