Check out faculty salaries at: https://data.chronicle.com. It is interesting to compare the various schools over time. Some colleges are above and some below the average. Some keep up with inflation and some don’t. For example, Middlebury College is paying the same amount money to its professors as it did back in 2007. Hopefully that will change now that they have finally balanced their budget.
The numbers are meaningless, since there are very large differences in salary between departments, and a few very highly paid professors who were hired from the private sector or hired because they are Very Big Names in their field can create the illusion that a college pays very well… They need to provide median salaries, and they need to break it down by college/school at very least.
I agree that to compare the salary data from huge universities is difficult. Nevertheless it is helpful to compare small rural LACs. Plus they directly compete for faculty and you can see trends.
But without considering the subject areas of the faculty, the comparison becomes less valid.
I agree the data does not allow comparisons between individual departments. It does allow for global comparisons of the general level of faculty compensation which, for example, in Middlebury’s case it dramatically exposes the huge sacrifices the faculty has made to balance their budget.
Faculty spouse here – at least in terms of LACs, there’s not going to be huge differences between salaries in say, Humanities vs. Sciences. It is interesting to see some of the differences among peer and aspirational peer schools. And in terms of faculty raises, everyone we know, regardless of size, location of institution, has been told for for probably 20 years that raises are in the 1-3 range%. The only opportunities for significant bumps internally are getting tenured (promotion from Assistant to Associate Professor) and then getting promoted from Associate to Full.