Professor Salaries.

Graduate School
1

<p>So, I'm a UC student and we have this little niffty thing were you can look up the salaries of public employees. Professors fall under this category (hella intrusive, yes!)</p>

<p>I noticed a few things.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I noticed that one of the professors in my department makes more than professors who have been working for 20+ years. Why is that? This professor is only an "associate" professor. While the people who have been working 20+ years are full blown professors.</p></li>
<li><p>What is your pay based on? Research, teaching and service, right? </p></li>
<li><p>Why is the starting salary so low? 30k for ALL of that education? Seems exploitive. </p></li>
<li><p>Is there any good reading mateiral out there that discusses salaries/tenure?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thankies</p>

2

<ol>
<li>I noticed that one of the professors in my department makes more than professors who have been working for 20+ years. Why is that? This professor is only an “associate” professor. While the people who have been working 20+ years are full blown professors.</li>
</ol>

<p>A: Salaries depend strongly on the quality of research and the professional reputation of the faculty member (which is 90% based on research). The best universities compete for talent in a national market. They’re looking for publications, reputation, and research grant history. Salaries within ranks, especially at Associate and full Professor, can be highly “unequal” because performance levels differ. Years of service by itself is not that important because new entrants to a given faculty rank, or new hires in general, get market-competitive salaries, while “long time” members in a given rank may get minimal raises from year to year unless they do stellar research or have competitive outside offers from other universities.</p>

<ol>
<li>What is your pay based on? Research, teaching and service, right?</li>
</ol>

<p>A. Depends in part on the type of school. At research-oriented universities, and in research-oriented programs, your pay is based overwhelmingly on your research. In some places, the “quantity” of research (articles and books published, etc.) counts as much as the “quality” of research (publication in leading journals in your field, citations to your work by other scholars, ability to win ontinuous competitive grant funding, awards and prizes). But mainly it’s quality that matters, or perhaps high quantity of high quality research.</p>

<p>Teaching matters next, but its weight in salary determination varies a lot from department to department and college to college. Generally speaking small colleges (LAC’s) pay lower salaries than large universities but also link salary raises more to teaching performance than do large universities. But in almost any decent college you don’t get promoted (or tenure) or survive just based on good teaching unless you are a star in the classroom.</p>

<p>Service? Rarely is a critical factor in salaries. Also, you can’t get promoted based on service alone anywhere I know of, unless you somehow slip into the administrative class, so to speak, in mid-career (after you earn tenure) and earn your promotion to full professor that way – not based on your research or teaching.</p>

<ol>
<li>Why is the starting salary so low? 30k for ALL of that education? Seems exploitive.</li>
</ol>

<p>A. Where did you get that figure? I don’t know of any PhD starting out as an Assistant Professor full time who is making less than $60K. Anybody getting 30K is either part-time, an adjunct or visiting assistant prof, or hasn’t finished the PhD yet. $30K is closer to what a 1/2-time graduate assistant would be receiving over 12 months than what a typical faculty member earns.</p>

<p>Also, average salary levels differ greatly according to what field you’re in. Generally speaking, salaries in the humanities are lowest, social sciences are higher, then sciences, then the professional schools. But there are huge differences across the different discipliines (as well as across individuals). For example in social sciences, economists make very high salaries while anthropologists make fairly low salaries – but this is just referring to the “average,” not what the academic stars might make in a given field.</p>

<ol>
<li>Is there any good reading mateiral out there that discusses salaries/tenure?</li>
</ol>

<p>Not that I know of. I’ll pass on this one. Hope the above information is helpful.</p>

3

<p>The salary info is probably also just for what the school is paying the professors. Professors can also be paid out of the grant money they bring in. I know at my school there’s something like a 1% minimum, so if they win a one million dollar grant, they’re going to get at least ten thousand dollars out of it.</p>

4

<p>RacinReaver, in addition to the salaries, the grant/other/total compensation is listed.</p>

<p>mackinaw, I’m curious to know who sets the salaries for professors and who has the authority to make salary offers to potential new professors. Is the department chair in charge of this stuff?</p>

5

<p>@Slorg: the salaries are set by agreement between the department chair and the dean to whom s/he reports. Typically, a letter of offer binds the institution in some way so it needs signatures up the line before it’s official.</p>

<p>When a department conducts a search for a new hire, it usually begins with a range of salaries in mind – controlled by its own budget and by funds that other units (departments, programs, etc.) might be willing to contribute (for example if the position involves a joint appointment to more than one departent).</p>

<p>The process usually differs depending on the level (rank) of the position. Generally speaking a department chair/dean can have a pretty good idea in advance what they’ll have to pay to hire a newly minted PhD. They might figure that they’ll have to pay upwards of $70,000, say, just by knowing what salaries their competitors are offering. But when they go shopping for faculty at other ranks, it’s often hard to know in advance what the salary will have to be – keeping in mind that such offers often have to entice faculty members to leave their current positions. But even then they had better have a good idea in advance what they’ll be able to pay, or else they’ll be wasting a lot of time and effort if they can’t come up with a competitive offer.</p>

<p>There is more to a good offer than just salary (and fringe benefits), of course. Often both the department, the dean, and other administrators (e.g., the VP for Research) will contribute to the total package, which can greatly exceed the salary+FB component. Namely, money for starting up labs or research groups (space, equipment, research assistants, postdoc, and supplies and services); IT; travel and research support; and so on. </p>

<p>In sum, the department chair is “in charge” of putting the package together and negotiating with the candidate for the position, but funds come from several places.</p>

6

<ol>
<li>Why is the starting salary so low? 30k for ALL of that education? Seems exploitive.</li>
</ol>

<p>A. Where did you get that figure? I don’t know of any PhD starting out as an Assistant Professor full time who is making less than $60K. Anybody getting 30K is either part-time, an adjunct or visiting assistant prof, or hasn’t finished the PhD yet. $30K is closer to what a 1/2-time graduate assistant would be receiving over 12 months than what a typical faculty member earns.</p>

<p>In reference to the above, there are many small LACs that pay $30k or thereabouts to entering assistant professors in humanities fields. Darn right it’s exploitive. But the market is so glutted, and jobs are so few…</p>

7

<ol>
<li>What is your pay based on? Research, teaching and service, right?</li>
</ol>

<p>A. Depends in part on the type of school. At research-oriented universities, and in research-oriented programs, your pay is based overwhelmingly on your research. In some places, the “quantity” of research (articles and books published, etc.) counts as much as the “quality” of research (publication in leading journals in your field, citations to your work by other scholars, ability to win ontinuous competitive grant funding, awards and prizes). But mainly it’s quality that matters, or perhaps high quantity of high quality research.</p>

<p>And in reference to the above, “teaching/research/service” are the three bases upon which tenure and promotion are based, not salaries.</p>

<p>Merit raises are generally closely linked to research. At lower-tier LACs and CCs, they are closely linked to teaching and service.</p>

<p>Note: I am not critiquing mackinaw’s fine answers. They are dead-on, particularly in regard to the sciences.</p>

8

<p>Well Thanks everyone for the replies. That puts things in perspective</p>

<p>Professor X…yes, I checked again. A faculty member in my department is an assistant professor and only makes 37K.</p>

9

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<p>Certain academic departments, notably those that have strong private sector demand such as departments of business/accounting/finance, exhibit salary inversion in which the youngest faculty are also the highest paid. For example, I know one newly hired assistant prof of accounting at a school that shall remain unnamed who is by far the highest paid member of his department, far higher than any of the long-time tenured faculty. The notion is that he could get a lucrative private sector job at an investment bank or hedge fund, so the school needs to offer a competitive salary. On the other hand, tenured faculty are loathe to forfeit tenure by moving to the private sector, and so the school has no need to offer them competitive salaries.</p>

10

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