Faculty raises:

6/8/2010: This is rumor but we hear President Lariviere is still going to push to raise faculty pay. For full prof’s this is the lowest in the AAU by 10% and is currently at 84% of our “peer institutions.” Most of the raises will go to the full’s as a group, they are the most underpaid.

In the comments, “Wild and Crazy Duck” thinks this is the wrong time to push for raises. I disagree. The counterargument is that drastic steps are needed to ensure UO’s survival as a top research school, that this should be a top state priority, and that the benefits to the students are worth the extra tuition. I think Lariviere can and will make that case to the public. He’s already got a bunch of newspaper editorial boards to sign on, including the Oregonian and the RG. And I bet that he got the OUS Board to agree to something like this before he accepted the job.

So which fulls will get the raises? Lariviere has ditched Russ Tomlin’s plan, which was to give the most money to those making the least relative to their peers, with a small merit bump. The new plan is an across the board increase (still targeted mostly at fulls) in proportion to current salary with the amounts determined by how far the department is behind its comparators. The main difference is that Tomlin’s plan would have given most of the money to those making less than the dept. average, the new plan will give most to those making more.

No word yet on OA’s and senior administrators but we can assume the latter are spending a lot of time on figuring out how to get their own raises. In the past UO has used “stipends” to funnel more money to the senior administrators, then folded the stipends into salary later, when no one is looking. For example, Provost Bean got a $12,000 stipend (folded into his salary last year), Diversity VP Martinez gets a $23,306 stipend on top of his regular pay and his off the books OSLC money. These stipends are supposed to go to faculty who take on extra administrative assignments. Too bad!

* Note to reader: These stipends are not for expense reimbursements: they are regular taxable income, just from a different pot.