ATTITUDES ABOUT FACULTY SALARIES

This scale focuses on whether market forces determine faculty salaries.

  1. Faculty should be paid according to what are the normal salaries at other institutions for different disciplines (i.e., like engineering, or business, or education).
  2. 2. University faculty should be compensated for the type of work that they do (i.e., they teach and do research) and not according to the discipline they belong to.
  3. 3. Assume that two faculty who are at the Associate Professor level teach about two courses per semester, do about the same amount/quality of research, and advise about the same number of doctoral students. If one is in Engineering and the other is in Liberal Arts, it is fair to pay them considerably different salaries.
  4. 4. Primarily, market forces (i.e., discipline driven) should determine the salaries of faculty.
  5. 5. One Associate Professor teaches a heavy load (very well) but does little research. Another Associate Professor in the same department does a lot of research (very well) but does little teaching. Both faculties should be compensated with approximately the same salary.
  6. 6. Professor X has been working at the university for 25 years, coming as an Assistant Professor, being relatively productive and moving through the ranks to the rank of Full Professor. Currently, the department is searching for another professor, perhaps at the beginning Associate Professor level, who would be a second addition to complement the work done by Professor X (assume that the department has grown and more sections of courses need to be offered). The department is successful in finding a person but has to offer that new person a higher salary than Professor X. This seems fair.
  7. 7. Faculty, regardless of discipline, who have been at an institution for approximately the same length of time, and have been approximately equally productive, and who have achieved the same rank (say Full Professor with 4 years in rank) ... should be earning approximately the same annual salary.
  8. 8. A survey was done that showed that Associate Professors in Engineering made about 35% more, on average at the top 25 schools, than Associate Professors in Liberal Arts (with similar records of productivity) at these same top 25 schools. These data seem adequate reason and argument for continuing this practice.
  9. 9. Let's say that quality of a group of universities is categorized into 3 tiers: Level 1 (Best) to level 3 (Weakest). Also assume that in all of these institutions, there are programs in education, business, and engineering, and liberal arts, etc. There should be more variation (ie, differences) in salaries across the different levels of institutions than across the disciplines WITHIN the institutions.
  10. 10. Assume that in Institution Y ... the typical Associate Professor of English makes 40% less than the typical Associate Professor of Business. Because of this, it is reasonable for the Institution to expect that the Associate Professor of Business to do approximately 40% more work.
  11. 11. A university is part of the larger community, where salaries vary according to the professions in which people work. Therefore, similar salary variation should exist across disciplines within the university.
  12. 12. The role of any university/college should be to produce well-trained professionals to fill the job needs of society. In society, some professionals (doctors, lawyers, and engineers) earn higher salaries than others (schoolteachers, social workers, and writers for local newspapers). Because of this, salaries of faculty should reflect these differences too.
  13. 13. Assume that two faculty members are similar in terms of quality of work. Any difference in their general levels of salary should primarily be based on their different years of experience.
  14. 14. The salaries of university professors should be based primarily on the number of years of work experience within the institution. (I.e., one associate professor who has been at that rank at University X should be paid more than another associate professor who has only been in that rank for 5 years at that institution).
  15. 15. Salaries for different levels of professorship (Assistant, Associate, etc.) should follow the same general pay scale across the different departments (engineering, business, liberal arts, etc.) within the same institution.
  16. 16. Some colleges have a salary scale where the years of experience and the degree you have (masters, doctorate) are the major factors in levels of compensation no matter what subject you teach or department you work in. This seems a reasonable way to determine faculty pay.
  17. 17. One would expect that the morale of faculty with respect to their pay would be similar in institutions where there is a relatively fixed pay schedule compared to other institutions where faculty are paid much more in some disciplines than others.
  18. 18. Salaries of faculty should be based solely on the discussions between the faculty member and the department head or dean.
  19. 19. Above and beyond some base salary that is common to all faculty in all disciplines based on rank and years in rank ... differences in salary between those at the same rank should primarily be determined by productivity differences (ie, better quality of teaching, more funded research, etc.).
  20. 20. The Dean should have the authority to offer whatever salary he/she must in order to get a good faculty candidate to commit to come to that institution, independent of what other faculty in his/her college earns.