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Post-review raises worth 1/3 of a goat

9/5/2013: President Gottfredson has a nice full professor’s salary to fall back, just in case his president gig at $540K doesn’t work out. His $360K fallback is about 250% of the AAU public average for sociology full professors:
The rest of UO’s full professors are currently at 82% of the AAU public average. His latest salary proposal included a modest increase in the post-review raises for full professors How modest?
Here’s the bottom line: Gleason’s $350 goat bonuses will deliver about $420,000 in new money to the faculty. In comparison, over the two year contract, the post-review raises are worth about $147,000 – barely enough to buy 1/3 of a goat.

For comparison: Interim Provost Scott Coltrane’s office is budgeting $2.2M for the coming year to pay for the athlete-only Jock Box tutoring operations. This is a $300,000 increase over last year:

The full roll out of the post-review raises will take 7 years, at which point they will still only cost about 1/3 of the Jock Box subsidies.

The details: Assume there are 240 UO full professors in the union and that this is a steady-state.

Under the current and new plans, 1/6 of them come up for a sixth year post-tenure review every year. That’s 40 per year. Assume these reviews are 6 years after promotion, or 18 years into a 30 year career, so that they will receive their post-review raises for 12 more years. This means that in any given year 2/3 of the full professors, or 180, are receiving these raises. Assume that 3/4 of the full professors reviewed merit the highest raise.

Under current policy this is worth $4,000, the rest get a $2,000 raise. The total steady-state cost in salary to UO of this policy is therefore =0.75*4000*180+0.25*2000*180 or $630,000 a year.

Salary for a UO full professor currently averages $112,700. Assume that for those up for review it is $120,000. President Gottfredson’s latest bargaining proposal changes the pay supplement for the highest merit evaluation from $4000 to 8% of salary, and 4% for the rest. The total steady-state new policy therefore costs 0.75*120000*0.08*180+0.25*120000*0.04*180 or $1,512,000
So, in steady-state, the incremental salary in this offer is $882,000 per year, about the same as a 1.5% average raise for all TTF’s. 
But here’s the kicker: These new pay increases do not take effect until after the review, or year two of the contract. And after that there is a 6 year phase in, as full professors come up for their reviews. So the incremental salary from this policy, for the 2 years of this contract, is $0 + $882,000/6, or $147,000.
On the other hand there’s the $350 goat signing bonus: This is prorated by FTE. Assume there are 1200 FTE equivalents in the faculty union. $350*1200 = $420,000.

These post-review calculations ignore the compounding effect of later wages, and their effect on the post-tenure raises, but given the compression at UO this is a small effect for now. And for that matter, if you go in with colleagues and buy 2 goats you get milk every year, and a much more rapid compounding growth effect too, so long as you get a billy and a nan.

One Comment

  1. Anonymous 09/06/2013

    Tenure is wonderful. Tenure at $360,000 a year? Boy, these are generous terms. I suppose he also claims raises for his secondary “on leave no pay” position?

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