Faculty salaries are down.
Average full-time faculty salaries dropped by 5 percent in the 2021-22 academic year when adjusted for inflation, according to the American Association of University Professors’ annual report. It’s the largest single-year drop in the 50 years that the AAUP has tracked academic wages.
The report, released on Wednesday, includes employment data for more than 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members at over 900 colleges, as well as pay data for senior administrators at 522 institutions. It found that while full-time faculty salaries were 2 percent higher than in 2020-21, that was actually a pay cut when adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, college presidents saw their salaries increase by 7 percent in 2021-22, keeping up with inflation.
Some institutions said that they expanded their share of tenured professors or that their average salaries went up, but the report cautions against taking this at face value. Those increases could be an effect of laying off adjunct faculty members, who usually earn lower salaries.
Inflation is creeping into every corner of the college experience, including sticker price. This week, a 4.25-percent increase for resident undergraduate tuition was proposed to the Iowa Board of Regents. The board will vote on the plan next month, the Des Moines Register reports. Similarly, in Michigan, Jackson College is raising tuition by 4.5 percent to keep up with inflation, according to Fox 47 News. And Rutgers University will raise tuition and fees 2.9 percent next year, a rate that’s higher than last year’s increase but well below the inflation rate, NJ.com reports.
Changes in the economy can quickly affect higher education. The recession of 2008-9 reshaped the industry in the short term — with furloughs and cutbacks on campuses. In the long term, colleges had to re-evaluate their roles in the American economy. It’s still to be seen whether our current bout with inflation will have similar effects on higher education, but for the moment it is changing the pocketbook perspectives of those who are working, or paying, for colleges.
Read Isha Trivedi’s full story here.
