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Faculty Salaries: A National Survey and a Special Report
STORY: Experience Doesn’t Always Pay
TABLES: Salaries Across Institution Type and Discipline
DATABASE: Search the Results of the AAUP Survey
Sources of Data
Average faculty salaries: Annual survey by the American Association of University Professors. The data for 2010-11 includes more than 1,300 institutions chosen by the AAUP. The salaries are rounded to the nearest $100 and adjusted to a nine-month work year. The figures cover full-time members of each institution’s instructional staff, except those in medical schools. Institutional characteristics: U.S. Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or Ipeds.
Characteristics of college communities: U.S. Census Bureau. Data on cost of living are from the Accra Cost of Living Index.
Details: The data shown from these sources are the most recent available. “N/A” means data are not available.
Views of the Data
Table view: Allows you to compare faculty salaries, and other key institutional and location characteristics, among multiple colleges you select.
Map view: Allows you to view locations of institutions and their peers on a map.
Chart view: Allows you to plot how institutions compare according to multiple variables.
Details: Additional data about an institution’s characteristics, salaries, faculty members, and students.
Definitions
% Admitted: The percentage of all applicants admitted.
Carnegie classification: The college’s classification according to the Basic Classification taxonomy created in 2005 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Cost of living: Ranges are based on a nationwide index.
Est. median SAT: This represents the median SAT score for math and reading or the median ACT composite score converted to an equivalent SAT score. Colleges do not report those medians to Ipeds, so The Chronicle estimated them based on other data that the institutions do report. Institutions report the 25th- and 75th-percentile scores for the math and reading sections of the SAT; they also report the 25th- and 75th-percentile for the composite ACT, which is a combination of math and reading scores. We estimated the median combined SAT score by averaging the 25th- and 75th-percentile SAT verbal score and adding it to the average of the 25th- and 75th-percentile SAT math score. We converted ACT composite scores into equivalent median SAT scores for math and reading using a conversion formula supplied by the College Board. We converted the 25th-percentile ACT composite score to an equivalent SAT score for math and reading, did the same for the 75th-percentile ACT score, then averaged the two figures. For institutions accepting both tests, we used either the SAT median or the converted ACT median, depending on which test was taken by a larger percentage of first-time, first-year, degree-seeking freshmen.
% Female Faculty: Percentage of total full- and part-time faculty members who are women.
% Freshmen on Pell Grants: The percentage of first-time, full-time undergraduates (i.e., freshmen) receiving Pell Grants.
Full-time faculty: The number of full-time employees whose primary responsibility is instruction, research, service, or a combination of all three and who have been designated by their colleges as having faculty status.
% Full-time faculty: Percentage of all faculty members who are full time.
% Full time: Percentage of total enrolled students (undergraduate and graduate) who attend full time.
% Graduate students: Percentage of total enrolled students who are graduate students.
Location: The name of the Census Bureau metropolitan area, called a Core Based Statistical Area, where the college is located. For colleges not contained within such an area, we show data for the college’s state.
Location type: Census Bureau description of the location, as reported in Ipeds.
Racial diversity: Ranges are based on a statistical measure of the probability that two people randomly selected from that community would be of different races.
% Tenure track: The percentage of full-time faculty members who are tenured or on the tenure track.
Total enrollment: Total number of undergraduate and graduate students (head count, not full-time equivalents).
% Underrepresented minority: The percentages of all full- and part-time faculty members and of total enrolled students who are American Indian, black, or Hispanic.
