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Public-private university salary gap widens: Report
Graduates pose after New York University's commencement ceremony at Yankee Stadium on May 16, 2012 in the Bronx borough of New York City.
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A new report out today by the American Association of University Professors reveals a widening salary gap between public and private university professors. Given the dismal outlook of State budgets across the country, public universities will have to find a way to compete for talent with fewer resources than their private counterparts.
For a doctoral professor at public research university the average salary this year is $123,393. That same professor at a private university makes just over $167,118. It’s a gap that’s grown since last year.
John Thelin, author of The Rising Cost of Higher Education, says that disparity will have a profound impact on where professors chose to teach.
“Private and independent colleges and universities will be far more competitive and attractive to top academic talent,” Thelin says.
With education funding growing tighter, both public and private universities are offering fewer tenure-track positions. Saranna Thornton, one of the authors of the report, says this could lead to a pipeline effect.
“The best and brightest undergrads, we worry about people like that not even going into higher education,” Thornton says.
Instead, those graduates are could choose more lucrative careers in medicine, law and engineering.
Would echo much of what the prior listener pointed out, but a bigger issue that gets lost in the 1:26 segment is that nearly HALF of all instructors in non-profit higher education are part-time adjunct faculty. The median per course compensation for those faculty members according to a 2012 report by New Faculty Majority is $2,700. Adjuncts also typically do not receive paid healthcare and retirement benefits and have very little, if any, job security. To make matters worse, many colleges are capping part-time faculty hours to avoid having to provide them healthcare under ACA. These are committed and capable educators, but their stories often get overlooked in segments like this.
As Sarrana Thornton, an author of the AAUP report, pointed out, many individuals are choosing to pursue other careers because there are fewer tenure-track jobs. I believe that should be that tenure-track jobs are a smaller share of faculty jobs, overall, than before (but that there are not fewer in numbers, per se). MOST faculty are not the full professors making $120-160 as noted in the segment, which was not really made clear. However, the piece that was left out that is the most problematic is that the largest subset of the faculty (non-tenure-track or adjunct faculty) are making very little by comparison (as I noted above; $2,700 per course for part-time faculty - many make LESS; and The Chronicle of Higher Education has reported on adjunct faculty living on food stamps because they are paid so little). So, when Serrana Thornton pointed out that talented individuals are taking a pass on faculty jobs (which is probably correct), it is because the majority share of faculty jobs are off the tenure track and the largest share overall is paid very little (and are often only paid for classroom time, but not all the time spent outside class helping students and so on), does not typically receive any benefits, is not included in much of campus governance and decision making, may have very little control over the content of their courses, and receives very little support from institutions (e.g., professional development, formal evaluations, resources, email addresses and phone access, office space, etc). Even if you land a tenure-track job, many would tell you expectations for publication have increased so much and pressure to get tenure is so great, that even those jobs aren't particularly attractive to young scholars entering the job market anymore.
I LOVE Marketplace and I understand you all were trying to squeeze a lot into a minute and a half, but the result was misleading. It's really not fair to give listeners the impression most faculty are making $120-160,000 a year and are still so dissatisfied that they are leaving the academy for other jobs... All the more so when half of the faculty are making around $2,700 per course. You guys are usually really great about correcting any confusion about your reporting, so I hope you will take an opportunity to give your listeners a more complete account.
Although technically accurate, I really wish this report would more accurately represent typical faculty salaries. In this age of rising tuition, college students, parents, and politicians blame high faculty salaries for part of this rise. In reality, it is only the very elite, Research I institutions with average salaries as high as reported here. The vast majority of hardworking faculty at most of our private and public 4-year universities, as well as community colleges, salaries more typically in the $45,000-$60,000 ranges. Considering the education debt often accumulated to get even these lower paying jobs, many of the faculty so dedicated to educating college students can’t afford cell phones or cars even new enough to have CD players. And, this does not even address the growing contingent of part-time and adjunct faculty that are so exploited by this academic system.
