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Posts tagged as “Faculty pay”

Judge McShane dismisses Professor Freyd’s pay discrimination lawsuit

5/3/2019 update: The EW’s Camilla Mortenson has a brief report on the case here. The full opinion is at https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/093-19-05-02-Opinion-Order.pdf. The full docket is here.

4/11/2019 update. Arguments about to start. More later.

4/8/2019 update: UO’s attempts to dismiss Freyd lawsuit include redefining “Professor”

Full disclosure: I am not a lawyer.

Oregon’s average income rose 2.7%, UO’s faculty fell 1.1%

2/5/2019:  After adjusting for cost of living increases, Oregonian’s average real income rose 2.7% last year: The UO faculty, not so much: 1/18/2019: Provost announces 1.1% pay cut for UO faculty I’m no economist, but I can subtract. Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the cost of living in…

UO and comparator faculty pay by rank & gender, and admin pay

Updated below with info from Marie Vitulli (Math Emerita).

The 2015-16 AAUP salary survey is now out, and I’ve posted it below after the 2014-15 IPEDS data from the Chronicle. These data are self-reported by universities to the DoE or the AAUP, and not always accurately or consistently across universities. The definitions also vary across the two surveys, as do the comparison groups they provide.

I was surprised to see that the gender gap at UO shrinks with faculty rank both in dollars and percentages, and almost disappears in the AAUP data. In contrast, for both sets of comparison universities the gap is pretty constant in percentages.

I wondered how much the gender gap varies across departments. For UO, you can get average pay by department and rank (but not gender) for 2014-15 from Institutional Research here. Or you can really drill down in the individual salaries – Feb 2016 is here. (When I looked for my department, I found some large errors in the IR summary data.) IR has also posted a “Faculty Equity & Inclusion Report” here, but it does not have any salary data. How odd.

For 2014-15, from the Chronicle (IPEDS):

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For 2015-16, from the AAUP:

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UO’s AAUP numbers are basically unchanged from last year, because during bargaining the administration insisted on delaying the raises until after the survey due date.  Marie Vitulli (Math Emerita) has sent in this, comparing UO to our 8 AAU comparators. There is more on her website here.

By gender:

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Overall, we’re dead last in pay, except we edge out Iowa for assistants. Because they know Uncle Bernie will ask, the AAUP also reports total compensation numbers, i.e. pay plus benefits. The ratio of benefits to salary for UO is higher than average, although the AAUP is careful to point out that total compensation measures the cost of benefits to the institution, not the value of the benefits to the faculty. I’m not getting a lot of benefit from Mike Bellotti’s $500K PERS deal, but it’s sure costing UO and other state employers a lot. For health insurance, UO pays the same rate as all state employers, even though UO workers are healthier than average.

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And for a comparison, overall in 2013-14:

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I don’t know why the salary numbers UO reports to the feds are so different from the numbers they report to the AAUP. Note that the AAU also uses a very different comparison group: public universities that grant a certain numbers of doctoral degrees. PSU, for example, is in the AAUP comparator group but not the Chronicle one. (The data on instructor/lecturer/NTTF/contingent pay is not very comprehensive, so I’ve omitted it.)

For non-academic employees, the Chronicle reports that average UO pay for those classified as Management for 2014-15 was $124,406 vs. $114,465 for all VHR universities. UO pay for Office/admin support was $41,417 vs. the VHR average of $44,090. I don’t think these cross-university comparisons are very reliable because of differences n the definitions, but the time trends for UO should be, and the pay increases for Management at UO have been remarkable:

2012-13:

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2013-14:

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2014-15:

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Faculty pay by rank, gender time-trends 2004-2014 (2014 means the 2014-15 AY):

UO Institutional Research updates faculty, administrative, athletic pay

Normally they post this by the quarter, but, in my opinion, UO didn’t want to reveal the administrative and athletics spending during SEIU and faculty union bargaining (UAUO’s Unfair Labor Practices complaint is here) so this time it’s all in one pdf for the 2014-15 AY. Handy reverse-engineered excel spreadsheets, courtesy of a…

Union proposes 7% + 6% to get faculty to Lariviere target. Bargaining Session IV: Economics, Thursday 2/26 10AM.

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That’s Tobin Klinger in the back right, presumably he’ll have an “Around the 0” post up soon with the Duck view of the meeting.

2/26/2015 update: The union proposes raises of

July 2015:
2.5% ATB
2.0% Merit
1.0% Internal equity pool for each department
1.5% External equity pool, to be allocated across rank and dept. based on AAU public averages. No external equity raise from this pool to exceed 5%.

July 2016:
2.5% ATB
4.0% Merit

As before, 8% promotion raises, and 8% (exceeds expectations) or 4%(meets) 6th year review raises after promotion to full, and raises in the hiring floors for NTTFs.

My estimate is that this will get UO salaries to the AAU public peer averages by July 2016. The 2009 Lariviere/Coltrane/Bean plan would have done this by July 2013 or so, but that’s money under the bridge:

From: James Bean [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 12:26 PM
To: Deans Working Group
Subject: Faculty Salaries
The Missouri article stating that UO has the lowest salaries in the AAU has caused quite a stir (we have since verified that they were correct). Low salaries were always thought of as just Oregonian. But 34 out of 34 is a whole other thing. We cannot have this. Richard’s reaction was “this is job #1.” Richard will likely have an announcement on how we are attacking this when politically feasible (after last gavel). Please communicate to your faculty that the Missouri article really got our attention. This may require disruptive solutions.
Thanks, Jim
_______________________________
James C. Bean
Senior Vice President and Provost

Five days later, the Register Guard’s Editors essentially endorsed Lariviere’s plan to get UO faculty to the AAU medians:

The market for academic talent is national, even global. From a salary standpoint, Oregon has dropped out of the competition. The state is fortunate in having universities that continue to meet high standards, but Oregon’s advantages — a relatively low cost of living and a high quality of life — can only be relied upon to make up part of the salary deficit.

Richard Lariviere, who will become president of the UO in July, comes to Eugene from the University of Kansas, an AAU university with an average faculty salary of $91,400 — 25 percent higher than at the UO. He’s no doubt aware that higher education claimed 15.1 percent of Oregon’s general fund budget in 1987-89, but received only 6.4 percent in 2007-09. One of Lariviere’s continuing challenges will be to persuade Oregon’s governor and Legislature that underfunding higher education has consequences.

In March 2011 Scott Coltrane, at the time CAS Dean, announced his plans to implement this for CAS faculty:

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Russ Tomlin, then VP for Academic Affairs, released a detailed spreadsheet showing the plan for the entire UO, designed to get salaries to the AAU comparator averages by no later than 2014:

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But then Kitzhaber and Pernsteiner fired Lariviere, and Allyn Ford and the OUS Board replaced him with Bob Berdahl, then Mike Gottfredson. They devoted all their energies to fighting with the faculty over pay, and everything else.

Getting back to the present, Coltrane’s administration is hiding basic financial information from the union – which has been waiting for more than 3 months, and has paid $1700. Rumor has it that Moffitt and Shelton are also hiding this information from the Administration’s bargaining team, if that makes it any more excusable.

They will make their economic counterproposal on March 12.

(Jim Bean, of course, is still collecting his pork from the administration’s bloated budget.)

12:01 PM: Lots of talk now about national searches. This is all about faculty searches. The administration hires its own people without any search whatsoever, e.g. $130K AVP for Collaboration Chuck Triplett. So it’s pretty amusing to listen to Bill Brady talk about how such searches are needed to increase diversity.

12:30PM: Session IV ends. Session V, with the admins counterproposal on raises, will open with a presentation from Jamie Moffitt, explaining where she’s been spending all our money. In the Library Collaboration room, 10AM Thursday, March 12. Should be well worth attending.

2/15/2015: Some history: In 2013 the union opened with a proposal for 9% raises for each of the two years of the contract. Basically this was the Lariviere plan, to get UO salaries to the AAU medians. The University countered with, if I remember correctly, an offer of 2%, for one year. Rudnick, Gleason, and Blandy said this was all UO could afford, saying UO had already spent the Lariviere money on other things.

Months of bitter haggling ensued. VPFA Jamie Moffitt refused to give the union the documents showing UO’s budget projections:

The union brought in Howard Bunsis, a forensic accountant, to challenge those few budget numbers that Moffitt would provide. Bunsis showed that Moffitt had been building a large and increasing reserve – so large it broke OUS’s rules. Moffitt fled the room in tears. Literally.

The University then made a take it or leave it offer of, if I remember right, 5.5% spread over 2 years. More was impossible. Rudnick told us “The well is dry”.

The union ignored the threat. Eventually we got ~12% in raises, spread over two years. Plus Tim Gleason’s $350 in Goat money. What will happen this time? Show up Thursday and find out:

UO faculty salaries $20K below AAU averages, whilst senior admins cash in

The bargaining for a new faculty union contract starts in January. UO’s IR department has just released the data from the AAU Data Exchange on UO faculty salaries, pasted below. Full data, by department, here. I’ve added a spreadsheet showing the salary and comparators for our Johnson Hall administrators below that. (Note…

UO Senate to Gottfredson: “Asked, and answered”

5/12/2014 Update: By an accident of history, President Gottfredson’s Q&A about the latest athletic scandal at the upcoming Wednesday May 14 Senate meeting will come on the anniversary of his first sustained interaction with the UO faculty, the infamous 2013 “asked and answered” debacle. (Yes, he managed to wait almost 10 months after taking office to meet the UO faculty.)

Since then, it’s been all downhill. I know there are those counseling we wait for the UO Board to deal with this disastrous president, and maybe they’re right. (Although I doubt that’s the message the alumni and parents are sending.) But here’s a little history to support the argument that enough is enough, and that if we don’t get answers from Gottfredson on Wednesday, we should hold an immediate vote of no-confidence:

5/14/2013: President Gottfredson’s first talk with UO faculty goes very badly.

Update on the shared governance “conversation” with President Gottfredson:

Our president’s most common response to the faculty is now a curt “read my written remarks” or “asked and answered”, a phrase lawyers use to semi-politely insult each other, when objecting to a question in court.

Bad news on future pay

9/26/2013: As near as I can tell UO has been spending about $50K a month on Sharon Rudnick and Kate Grado from HLGR to do the negotiating with the union, and another $30K or so a month for lawyers and consultants to write Barbara Altmann’s “fact check” website. That’s a…

Great news for UO finances!

9/10/2013: The latest US News rankings are great news for UO’s finances: The University of Oregon moved up in the rankings — jumping six rungs to No. 109 on the list of about 1,376 colleges nationally. And Christian Whithol of the RG reports on still more good financial news for UO: Eugene’s latest…