Faculty pay

5/10/2010: The local AAUP (American Association of University Professors) chapter sent along these recent data on faculty salaries at UO relative to our “comparator” schools. Obviously we are not comparable. Compensation is 90%, 97%, 93%, and 85%, for instructors, assistants, associates, and fulls, respectively. It’s worse if you look at pay – arguably a better measure: 77%, 91%, 85, 79%.

UO’s scheme has been to hire assistants at the market rate, and then screw them on raises. But isn’t this because our cost of living is low? No, Eugene housing prices are 140% of the median college town. It’s because administrators like VP Frances Dyke spent the tuition money on their own perks. We hear that may change. A commenter gives one explanation for why: “… The unionization effort is alive and well. Why would they leave when just the threat of a union has caused Admin to suggest raises this fall?”

Another commenter asks about how med school salaries figure in to these comparisons: Here’s a link to the insanely long UO Matters comparison from last year, during the furlough debacle. Briefly, we posted this:

UO senior administrators are paid 120% of their peers. More, if you adjust for size and complexity.

UO full professors are paid 81% of their peers.

Comparison institutions are all public and private PhD granting institutions from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. This is the comparison group UO uses when setting administrator salaries: no senior UO administrators are paid less than 100% of the median in this peer group. Frohnmayer, Bean and Martinez (even without his second job) account for most of the excess above 100%. Go here for the Chronicle faculty data, here for administrators.

UO Provost Jim Bean challenged this conclusion in the UO Senate. He claimed that the comparison faculty salaries we posted included salaries for (very well paid) medical school faculty. They do not. We are making a fair comparison between like groups of non-med school faculty. Bean is comparing UO administrators with no med school to supervise with those with responsibility for medical schools, adding to the bias in his results.

Additionally, in Provost Bean’s data and analysis of administrator salaries he compares UO administrators to those at AAU schools which have on average 160% of the students, 370% of the faculty, and 440% of the budget of UO. Provost Bean is a case in point, even using the comparator group he selected himself. As an internal hire – with no experience and in his first year on the job – he is paid 96% of the salary of the average AAU public university provost, who is dealing with an institution that is 4 times as large as UO.