Budget Pressures Limit Faculty Pay Raises At State, Land Grant Schools

Author: EDWARD R. SILVERMAN, pp.20 The average salary paid to science faculty at institutions belonging to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges rose only slightly in 1992-93 compared with the previous academic year, according to a recently released survey. Faculty in life and physical sciences departments at state universities and land grant colleges (institutions originally set up by United States government grants to teach agriculture) received salary increases averaging between 1.5 percent and 3.5 percent, according to the study. For instance, the average salary paid in the 1992-93 year to botany professors was $61,539, up 1 percent from 1991 to 1992. Chemistry professors received an average salary of $67,173, a 3.3 percent increase. And geology professors were paid an average salary of $60,606, a 3.9 percent gain. Professors in some departments, though, received virtually no increases. Among them were the zoology, entomology, and pharma- cology departments. The survey, which university administrators say is a closely watched indicator of academic pay scales nationwide, was conducted by the Office of Institutional Research at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. Responses were received early this year from administrators at 75 state universities and land grant colleges, who reported salary data on faculty in science as well as nonscience departments. The modest pay hikes revealed by the survey roughly matched last year's annual inflation rate, generally considered to be between 2 percent and 3 percent. Academic administrators say the small increases reflect continued budgetary pressure on state governments, which provide a great deal of state-school funding. "It's just a reflection of the general economic malaise," says Tom Field, associate director of planning and policy studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. "Relying on state support is a losing cause. Universities are going to have to find other sources of funding in order to prosper. The pie isn't getting any bigger." Says Lee Tarrant, Oklahoma State's assistant director for institutional research: "They [the schools] are just keeping up with inflation. So many state-supported schools feel strapped for cash and can't give the raises they'd like to give. Most of the people that I talk to are worried about faculty, particularly the stars, leaving. I don't know where a lot of people would go, but I'm sure there'd be a flight to industry." That may explain why the survey found that some faculty got steep increases, bucking the general trend of modest raises. It found, for example, that professors in such hot fields as pathology and genetics received average salaries that were 15.7 percent and 6.7 percent higher, respectively, than the comparable figures for 1991-92, reflecting the need to compete with industry for scientists in these areas. But with slow economic growth, these opportunities seem to have been available to only a small percentage of faculty in many schools, resulting in a lack of turnover and diminished salary increases, administrators say. "At many colleges, there just isn't the level of hiring going on that there used to be," says Jim Olomon, director of institutional research at the University of Montana in Missoula. "In recent years, that's probably been a bigger factor than anything in depressing salaries, he says. "We're totally dependent on government funding," says John Kalb, director of institutional research at Florida State University in `Tallahassee. "There's little leeway in allocation. And the situation is pretty bleak," he says, noting that some schools have gone more than a couple of years without any increases, suggesting that any future raises will amount to catch-up pay. Some relief may be provided by new hiring among assistant professors. These beginning faculty members don't have a salary track record, sometimes offering schools more leeway in formulating salaries, and that can translate into higher percentage increases than previous pay scales, administrators say. "The new assistant professor is entry-level in academe," Olomon says. "And to get them, you have to compete with all these other universities and institutions. That's where you hire the majority of your faculty, at that rank." There are other bright spots. Here and there, a school may be home to a major research project that, with considerable government backing, creates jobs and offers the pros-pect of higher pay to attract top faculty. In fact, Kalb's Florida State is an example. The school is home to a magnet lab, which enhanced its reputation by hiring J. Robert Schrieffer, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics. The lab has attracted extra dollars that probably wouldn't go to the university's hiring budget otherwise (J. Mervis, The Scientist, Oct. 1, 1990, page 3). The benefits included extra physics faculty, including some new assistant professors in both physics and chemistry. But, as Kalb notes, "without something like that lab, there's nothing dramatic happening in faculty salaries, including the sciences." Edward R. Silverman is a freelance writer based in Millburn, N.J.

Budget Pressures Limit Faculty Pay Raises At State, Land Grant Schools

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