3 Things a Faculty-Pay Survey Shows About Academic Jobs

In its annual faculty-compensation survey, released on Wednesday, the American Association of University Professors provides a snapshot of the earning power of full-time and part-time faculty members. The long and short of it: Pay raises were modest, faculty buying power has eroded, and many different factors are rolled into faculty pay. But the data, from nearly 1,000 two- and four-year colleges, also tell us three things about the academic workplace:

Professors’ paychecks are still squeezed by the effects of inflation.

In the 2018-19 academic year, full-time faculty members earned an average of 2 percent more than they did in the prior academic year. Yet for the third year in a row, the rise in the cost of living — 1.9 percent — ate away at their modest salary gains.

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The updated data.chronicle.com features figures about full-time faculty pay over the past decade, including the latest numbers from the Department of Education on some 4,700 colleges. The updated site also incorporates pay data for adjunct faculty members, as well as staff salaries, and makes it easy to compare salaries by state or type of institution.

And, as we’ve done with adjunct salaries, we’re gathering additional salary data from full-time faculty members to see how pay differs across departments.

Visit data.chronicle.com to add your data and explore the latest figures.

Of course, rank and institution played roles in faculty pay. For example, at doctoral institutions, full professors earned an average salary of nearly $154,000 a year. By comparison, assistant professors at the same institutions made almost $88,000.

Meanwhile, at baccalaureate-granting institutions, the pay gap between the two ranks was much smaller — as were the average salaries. Full professors earned about $106,000, compared with nearly $68,000 for those on the tenure track.

Part-time faculty salaries vary — a lot.

For the first time, the AAUP asked institutions to report minimum, maximum, and average pay rates per course section for part-time faculty members. Nationally, the average pay per course for part-timers was $3,894 for all institution types in the 2017-18 academic year. (The association sought data for 2017-18, not 2018-19, in order to maximize the information it received.)

But the pay rates at the 330 colleges and universities that responded could span a wide range, and sometimes pay at the same institution varied by thousands of dollars. The difference reflected the disparate ways institutions value certain disciplines, experience levels, market forces, and qualifications in the classroom.

East Tennessee State University is an example The minimum pay per course for part-time faculty members was $325, according to the survey. The maximum: $10,000. A spokesman for East Tennessee, in an emailed statement, said that “the range was due to market availability of faculty who can teach specialized courses in business, health sciences, education, and the liberal arts.”

The median salary per credit hour at the university, he said, is $700, which equals $2,100 per three-credit course. Adjuncts at East Tennessee have decided that figure isn’t enough, and a campus rally to demand pay raises is planned for Wednesday.

Gender equity remains an issue.

When it comes to women moving up the faculty ranks, the pipeline is “leaky.” At the start of their careers, women outnumber men at the assistant-professor rank, with the share of tenure-track women at all institutions at 12.8 percent. The comparable figure for men is 11.9 percent, the association said.

But at the associate-professor level, when most tenure is earned, the share of women shrank, to 12 percent, while the share of men went up, to 14 percent.

At the full-professor rank, men were 21 percent, compared with 10 percent for women. Men outnumber women at that rank at every type of institution except community colleges.

The association has long paid attention to the gender pay gap in academe, and with good reason: Its data show that at every type of institution, men earn more than women who hold the same jobs.

The Chronicle maintains a separate searchable database on faculty pay at about 4,700 colleges, based on information that is collected by the U.S. Education Department.

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.