The Plateau of Faculty Salaries

Okay, one final graph and then I'll knock it off. Readers may be suffering from graph fatigue. This one, again forwarded by Gary Brodowicz illustrates how faculty salaries, once you adjust for inflation, are nearly flat.

Unfortunately, given the state of the economy, we can probably rest assured that a few more years won't affect the current trajectory.

Salaries Adjusted for City-Specific Cost of Living

Just two more posts that come out of the rich data from the most recent AAUP annual report on salaries. This one deals with dollar-buying power. In previous posts, I highlighted how woefully PSU faculty are paid. But of course, these aren't apples-to-apples comparisons because it's more expensive to live in some cities than others.

In an email forwarded from GaryBrodowicz, we now have the weighted averages for selected "comparator schools" (those identified to be similar to PSU). These comparators are in cities with relative costs of living that all over the map, some more expensive than Portland, some less. (Numbers based on calculations from this site.) Have a look:

School_______________% PDX's S/L
George Mason Univ._______31.6%
Western Michigan Univ.__-29.8%
Univ. Toledo____________-28.3%
San Diego State Univ.____35.5%
Univ. Memphis___________-34.0%
Univ. Texas Arlington___-27.9%
Univ. Ill. Chicago_______15.9%
IUPUI___________________-31.3%
Wisc. Milwaukee_________-23.5%
Oregon State Univ.________0.0%
Univ. Oregon_____________-4.0%
Average__________________-8.7%

When to total all these up, Portland ends up more expensive by about 9%. Nevertheless, PSU faculty earn less than every school, despite the lower costs for many of them. Even more amazingly, our faculty earn less across the board--in no category do our faculty exceed faculty at another comparator school. Here's how the averages shake out:


It doesn't matter how you slice it, PSU faculty have really fallen behind.

How Are PSU Faculty Doing?

AAUP released its annual report on faculty salaries last week. Every year, I look through the listings to see just how far PSU faculty have fallen behind. This report has no rosier news--we're still at the very bottom for Ph.D.-granting public universities, trailing even in-state (and low-performing) Oregon and Oregon State. And these are data from 2008--before the economic crisis and 12.4% unemployment hit Oregon.

I will have more analysis throughout the course of the week, but I thought it would be useful to see the numbers, with some pretty little graphs, first. AAUP assembles these figures for teaching faculty only--researchers and academic professionals are not represented here. Yet while the entire membership isn't represented, we can see how faculty are doing--and perhaps make some larger judgments about Portland State University's priorities.

AAUP breaks out salaries by category--professor, associate professor, assistant professor, and instructor--and then gives an average of all faculty. As you can see in the graph below, Portland State faculty do uniformly bad at every level. Our faculty are in the bottom quintile in each case (finer-grained categories are not available beyond quintiles). Click on the graph to enlarge it:


The breakdown in salaries, with the first number representing PSU averages and the second representing national averages, is:

Professor: $88,700, $115,500
Associate Prof: $67,800, $80,000
Assistant Prof: $55,700, $68,000
Instructor: $39,800, $45,500
All Professors: $66,600, $84,900

If the span between those two numbers seems to gape, it's not just your eyes playing tricks. Here's the PSU salary of each category as a precentage of the average:


Keep in mind that this disparity is between PSU faculty and the average of American faculty at public, Ph.D.-granting universities.

I'll have more later this week--


Update. Gary Brodowicz was doing some calculations of these data himself, and he forwards along a graph with total compensation (includes benefits and salary). It is much like my first graph above: