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Tennessee Vols beat Ducks by 10 points!

9/15/2013 benefits update – turns out we only lost by 9.75%.

For retirement, Tennessee gives new employees a choice, much like UO.

Tennessee pays the full cost of the defined contributions plan, like UO. It puts 10-11% into the employees defined contribution account – faculty pay nothing. UO puts 6.42% into its defined contribution plan, plus the 6% pickup, for 12.42% total
For defined contributions, cost is pretty much what you get, so UO’s ORP retirement for new faculty hires is worth just 2% more than Tennessee’s. And as a commenter notes you should adjust for the higher salaries going into the plan, and also for the fact that their 11% rate kicks in for most of the faculty. So, lets says it’s worth 0.25% less than UO’s.

For earlier hires and OPSRP, it’s way harder to compare. Uncle Bernie and me take stabs at trying to estimate the value of UO retirement benefits for pre-1996 hires here.

9/14/2013: Last week The Virginia Cavaliers crushed us by 19%.

Coach Gottfredson needs to make some big changes
in his game plan after these two losses. Next game is UC-Berkeley,
at home. The spread doesn’t look good, Duck fans.

Faculty salary averages for Fall 2012, from the Chronicle/AAUP data:

27 Comments

  1. Go Ducks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 09/14/2013

    Coach shouldn’t have started with Rudnick and Geller. But the bench is weak too.

  2. Anonymous 09/14/2013

    If there is supposed to be a link to a comparison with U. Tennessee salaries, it doesn’t work for me.

    Anyhow, as established with great aplomb here by one “Uncle Bernie,” salary comparisons are meaningless without also including retirement benefits, where UO is clearly superior.

    • Anonymous 09/14/2013

      You can’t claim that this comparison is meaningless without retirement benefits AND that UO is clearly superior in retirement benefits. That just makes no sense.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      Gone are the days of having superior retirement, my friend. Try to keep up.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      That is just plain idiotic, if you are saying that Oregon retirement benefits aren’t better than the usual.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      Even Tier 3 is superior in the sense of the state paying the “employee contribution” of 6%. That is very rare, I don’t know if any of our official AAU comparators do that.

    • UO Matters 09/15/2013

      In keeping with the spirit of this series of football posts, I’d be happy to add comparison of benefits plans, if you make an attempt to be comprehensive and include what’s available on housing assistance, summer salary startups, etc, and address the value to the faculty, not just the cost.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      I believe one “Uncle Bernie” addressed most of this, with no effective refutation from anyone, including UOMatters.

      The only exception I recall was housing assistance at UC Santa Barbara. Which of course UC needs to offer because of the catastrophic cost of housing there.

      I remember the discussion of health insurance benefits, too, which was ridiculous because whatever the relative cost to the university, it was only being counted by Uncle as a full unit of health insurance benefits — which it is. Plus, I would add, there was no consideration by UOMatters of the fact that (1) we only pay 5% of our health benefits; and (2) there was no indication at all whether the supposed “higher costs” of being in the State health pool is different from our comparators — not that it is relevant.

      If you have any real information showing that UO faculty get an inferior health benefit, would like to hear about it.

      Really, the insistence that UO benefits — retirement — are not superior and should not be included in assessment of our compensation — and the insistence on counting only salary — strikes me as juvenile, not to say idiotic.

      Nobody — not a fair-minded faculty member; not a member of the public (who loathes us for our rich retirement and health benefits); and not the Administration — can possibly take such nonsense seriously.

    • UO Matters 09/15/2013

      So, you don’t have any numbers, but you spew anyway? Go away and start your own blog.

      For others, here’s UO: http://www.ous.edu/sites/default/files/dept/hr/benefits/files/04_RetireOptions_OPSRP-T3.pdf

      Tennessee gives new employees a choice:

      http://humanresources.tennessee.edu/benefits/tcrs/index.html
      http://humanresources.tennessee.edu/benefits/orp/index.html

      Tennessee pays the full cost of the defined benefit plan, as does UO. Hard to compare their value.
      Tennessee puts 10-11% into the defined contribution plan.
      UO puts 6.42% into its defined contribution plan, plus the 6% pickup, for 12.42% total.

      So, UO’s retirement for new hires is worth 2% more than Tennessee’s.

      For earlier hires, harder to tell. Bernie and me take stabs at it here: https://uomatters.com/2013/08/uo-retirement-and-health-benefits-cost.html

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      AND higher salaries means higher benefit for the Defined Contribution plan at the end of worklife. The only thing that makes UO total comp even hit the map in comparison to other places is the high retirement benefit. Now that these benies are eroding over time, it’s even more important than ever to get salaries up.

      Uh…by the way, the UO health for next year would have cost 10% if not for the union.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      Tennessee adopted the “pickup” plan in 1981, apparently shortly after Oregon led the way. One of, I think, four states that has a “pickup.” U. Tennessee not one of the UO comparator AAU schools, so hard to to see exactly what is the relevance.

      I would love to see any evidence that Tennessee has anything like Tier 1 for half its faculty — none provided in that link you gave.

      Anyway, did UOMatters ever post the U. Tenn. salary data, or is this just a mostly irrelevant post about Tennessee pension benefits?

    • thedude 09/15/2013

      We also showed other comparators like UC Boulder and U Washington both had housing assistance programs.

      Plus at UW, no income tax.

    • Anonymous 09/16/2013

      dude, hope to see the campaign to abolish the Oregon income tax — now I guess UO will have to start offering competitive tax structures!

      Do those Chronicle salary comparisons include the Tenn. graduate medical college, the engineering school, the vet school?

      Do you know? If not, the comparisons are meaningless.

      Since housing is 50-80% more expensive in those places, they better have some kind of housing assistance!

      A housing assistance program is usually an indication that the academic salary is far to low for the place to be affordable for housing.

    • UO Matters 09/16/2013

      No med school, yes to engineering, don’t know about vet school. Engineering salaries are typically about 10-15% above overall average, (close to b-school averages, and well below law school profs) so that’s unlikely to account for more than a few % points in the difference. http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/

    • Anonymous 09/16/2013

      Not sure whether to believe the UT medical center with medical school isn’t included — but regardless, throw in the extravagant Tier 1 benefits at UO for full profs, account for 2% higher pension benefits for younger faculty, higher salaries for UO assistants! Plus effect of engineering, vet school — you say a few % points — it looks like a wash to me. Plus UO faculty get to live in Eugene!

    • Anonymous 09/16/2013

      Not sure whether to believe the UT medical center with medical school isn’t included — but regardless, throw in the extravagant Tier 1 benefits at UO for full profs, account for 2% higher pension benefits for younger faculty, higher salaries for UO assistants! Plus effect of engineering, vet school — you say a few % points — it looks like a wash to me. Plus UO faculty get to live in Eugene!

  3. Anonymous 09/15/2013

    Full professors, an average of $110,900, I wish! I am a full professor and I make $74,000. Only two of more than 15 full professors in my department make $110,000+. The numbers posted show the university average, but they don’t show how low the salaries go. At the UO they go pretty low.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      I should add that I (the author of the comment above, a full prof who makes less than the supposed UO average for assistant professors) am a UO professor.

    • UO Matters 09/15/2013

      Yes. Median’s would be informative, or standard deviations. UO gets those numbers from the AAU, but they won’t share them. I’ll see what I can get from the AAUP.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      Dog says

      Remember these averages include law school profs as well as well-paidecon profs

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      Well paid, yes. Keeping up with market? Not so much. Econ is among those departments furthers behind their peers.

  4. Anonymous 09/15/2013

    Mmmmm let me guess – we ARE going to loose against Berkeley, too, right? Is that going to feel any better if I stick their mascot on my trash-bin? Just wondering …

  5. Anonymous 09/15/2013

    US News rankings: UVA #23, Tennessee #101, UO #109. Like most professions, I guess performance and demand play a role in compensation. UC-Berkeley #20.

    • Anonymous 09/15/2013

      You don’t get to #23 by paying faculty shit wages.

    • UO Matters 09/15/2013

      UVa has a rich and passionate alumni base, and an administration that makes sure those alumni give to support academics, not just sports. UO has ceded control of alumni giving to the athletic department.

    • Anonymous 09/16/2013

      Colleges and Universities that raise tuition to raise salaries/wages almost always rise significantly in the rankings. We seem to raise tuition regularly, but not increase faculty salaries appropriately (but we do remain highly competitive for administrator salaries)–overall a recipe for dropping in the rankings. Competitive salaries would help the UO rise–I challenge anyone to find evidence to show it wouldn’t help a lot.

    • Anonymous 09/16/2013

      You are right about what helps to rise in the U.S. News rankings — but UO has been rising the past few years!

      And actually, as I seem to remember, it has been stated here with documentation that UO salaries/total comp have risen markedly relative to peers in the past dozen years.

      Maybe that has something to do with the rise in ranking?

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