Here’s a sector-by-sector look at changes in average annual pay for faculty members at institutions of higher education from 2012-13 to 2020-21. Jobs can be sorted by professor, associate professor, assistant professor, instructor and lecturer. For more compensation data, visit our companion page about noninstructional-employee pay.
Salary data for the 2020-21 academic year:
About the data
Data come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (Ipeds), which comprises degree-granting U.S. colleges that participate in Title IV funding. The faculty data refer to full-time, nonmedical, instructional staff (either “instructional only” or “instructional combined with research and/or public service”) as of November 1 of the corresponding academic year.
Academic rank is usually assigned by each institution and includes professors, associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, lecturers, and those with no academic rank. “All ranks” includes all faculty.
In reporting faculty pay data since 2012-13, Ipeds provides the total number of faculty members, categorized by gender and length of contract, as well as the total amounts paid to them.
“Type” is based on highest degree granted. Only colleges with at least three faculty members in a given set (rank and gender) will display an average salary.
Average salaries for U.S., states, and types are generated by multiplying the nine-month-equivalent average salary of an institution times the number of faculty members in that rank. Those numbers are then divided by the total number of the faculty in each category (U.S., state, or type).
