Average faculty salaries nationwide climbed 3.8 percent last year, as Brown professors' salaries remain in the top third of doctoral universities, according to a new study. But the study's sponsor - the American Association of University Professors, a faculty advocacy group - said the data indicates financial inequality is growing among university instructors.
The AAUP's annual study found the first real increase in faculty pay in two years, as pay increases outpaced inflation. But results from its voluntary survey of more than 1,400 colleges and universities found that inequalities persist between larger and smaller schools, male and female professors and faculty in different disciplines.
Saranna Thornton, a labor economist at Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, Va., and chair of the AAUP committee that authored the study, told The Herald it is essential to provide numerical data "as opposed to just anecdotes" in order to understand trends in academics' salaries.
"The underlying mission (of the survey) is to keep, recruit and retain the best and brightest people as professors or college teachers," she said. "If salaries and benefits in higher education don't provide adequate compensation, the smart people are going to go into other careers, and that's not good for students."
Thornton said she was particularly shocked by the disparity in the average compensation - including salary and benefits - between full-time professors and Division I-A coaches in this year's survey. The average coach's compensation was on average more than nine times higher than that of full professors, according to the study.
"That was something that just astounded me. ... I think sends a scary message about where priorities are in higher education," Thornton said.
The study blamed investment earnings from institutional endowments for the growing disparity in faculty pay among universities. The AAUP reported that the 62 schools with endowments larger than $1 billion own 67.4 percent of American universities' invested assets. Schools with endowments of $100 million or less - more than half of American universities - own only 5 percent of invested assets.
This year, Rockefeller, Harvard and Stanford universities took the top three spots for highest paid full professors at private institutions, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which was given additional access to the data. Professors at Rockefeller are earning an average of $186,400 per year.
Brown's full professors ranked just within the top 10 percent of doctoral universities, with an average salary of $134,510, said Douglas Kinsella, an AAUP research associate. Associate professors were paid $83,876 - putting them within the top 20 to 30 percent - and assistant professors averaged a $72,587 annual salary, placing them in the top 10 to 20 percent, Kinsella said.
Kinsella said the ratings for benefits in each professor group were correlated to salary percentiles. Brown professors received about 29 percent of their salaries in benefits - "a reasonable amount," Kinsella said. "That's not the very top, but it's certainly not near the bottom," he said.
Schools use surveys "to rank (themselves) against a set of peers," Kinsella said. "In my experience, quite a number of institutions ... use reports with negotiations with faculty."
