FACULTY SALARY ANALYSIS: 2006-2007 

For more about our faculty union visit this link.

Dear Colleagues:

We have published a salary survey every year since 1974, the only exceptions being those years without raises. All the data comes from the UI Budget Office and the UI Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Salary data and analyses going back to FY2001 can be found at this link For the first time the UI did not provide percentage increase in salary, because the UI counsel determined that it constituted an invasion of privacy.  Please refer to our FY2006 survey to calculate that figure.  You can find the link here.

From 619 Faculty to 485 in 10 Years: Doing Much More with Much Less

During the academic year 1996-97 there were 619 faculty in the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor. This year the number is 485, a reduction of 134 faculty over ten years.  This means that UI students are enrolling in much larger classes and also being taught by more TAs and lecturers.  At least the budget outlay for faculty salaries, stagnant over this period, did increase $3 million to $33 million.

Governor's Higher Budget is Good, but he forgot to fund Pay Equity

Over the last five years, state funding for higher education has gone up only 3.3 percent while student fees have gone up a whopping 92 percent. Governor "Butch" Otter surprised just about everyone by proposing a 8.6 percent increase in the state's higher education budget.  He also recommended that $38 million be placed in an endowment fund to support need based scholarships. Also much welcomed was another $15 million for research.  Everyone was excited about the $12 million amount for pay equity until it was discovered that it was not funded, but included in a 5 percent raise for all public employees.

The university and college presidents are asking for $295 million, which includes a separate request of $11.8 million for pay equity and a 3.5 percent pay increase.  Their proposal would amount to $21 million for pay increases compared to Otter's $13.1 million.  The Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee must support the presidents' proposal.

Average UI Faculty Salaries Rose 7.7 percent in 2006-07—still 17.5 percent behind
Research II Average; Still Substantial Salary Deficiencies by Discipline

Those who justify these huge administrative salaries say: "This is what the market demands, and we are still paying less than peer institutions." If faculty salaries had been keeping up, this would have been persuasive. But, as the State Board of Education continues to approve these administrative increases each year, faculty salaries have fallen further and further behind. The result is a staggering failure to meet average of National Research II Institution salary levels, especially full professors in the following disciplines:  management/ marketing (-37.4%); foreign languages (-34.4%);  materials science (-34.3%); teaching/learning (-34%); philosophy (-33.3 %); psychology (-33.3%); family/consumer science (-32.4); political science (-31.1%); ag economics (-30.9%); history (-29%); civil engineering (-28.4%); statistics (-28.2%); sociology-anthropology (-27.9%); electrical engineering (-27.4%); curriculum/instruction (-27.1%); and accounting (-26.9%). For the complete list by discipline all ranks, by college all ranks, and average in each rank see this link. 

Over Ten Years, 37 Faculty in 11 Disciplines have moved on to Greener Pastures

Rep. Shirley Ringo asked the AFT to make a list of UI faculty who have left for better jobs. An e-mail survey of about 250 faculty resulted in responses from 11 disciplines reporting a total of 37 faculty moving on to greener pastures.  Plant, Soil, and Entomological Sciences reports a 20 percent attribution rate, and about a dozen faculty are actively looking for jobs elsewhere.  Biological sciences has lost at least eight faculty in ten years and they report three failed searches because of noncompetitive salaries.  The full list can be found at this link. Please email ngier@uidaho.edu if you have anyone to add to this list.

Promotion Increments Help Full Professors, but Associate salaries are still Compressed

For many years the faculty union urged the administration to increase the promotion increments in order to alleviate salary compression in the upper ranks.  They used to be $1,000 for promotion to associate and $1,500 to full.  We take some credit for the fact that the Hoover administration increased those increments to $5,000 and $6,500 respectively.  Recently they were boosted to $6,000 and $8,500, and finally we are seeing an appropriate gap between associate and full professor salaries. But associate professor pay is now far too compressed with reference to assistants and that problem must be addressed.

UI Ranks Third from Bottom among 19 Peer Institutions
UI Associate and Assistant Professors Rank Last; Professors 15 percent behind the average

Some Idaho Legislators complain that that Research II Institutions are somehow not the right group for salary com-parisons, but our standing among our peer institutions is not much better.  Table II shows that full professors in the top four institutions make nearly $27,000 more per year than their UI counterparts. One can also see that our assistant and associate professor rank last among the 19 institutions.  Even though Boise State is not a peer, it is noteworthy that that it pays its instructors on average $3,549 more than the UI does.  See Table IV for other Idaho campuses.

Administrative Raises Up 274% in 25 Years vs. Full Professors at 175%; CPI at 202

In 1995 we thought that we had succeeded in curbing excessive increases in administrative raises, but as Tables II & V indicate below, they have outstripped full professors by 99 percent over 25 years. During the period 1990-1995 raises for the higher administration rose by 21.34 percent compared to 16.5 percent for faculty. When the AFT made these increases an issue in 1995, the next year administrator pay rose only 2.33 percent, about 3 percent lower than the faculty.  Over the last ten years the differential has grown even more, and we are gratified that our protests have again borne fruit.  This year the average raise for administrators was 2.2 percent compared to the 7.7 percent for all faculty.  (Increases for new deans were not included.)  We certainly hope that this trend continues.

In a 2005 meeting with the AFT, Provost Douglas Baker said that increased pay for administrators is caused by high turn over.  In the past our administrators stayed in their posts much longer, and our theory is that excessive administrative salaries are caused by applying a corporate model to higher education management. United Airlines  just emerged from bankruptcy after dumping its pensions on the government and demanding wage reductions for its employees. Its management team, however, continues to get raises and bonuses.  Some of us discern some instructive and demoralizing parallels here.

White’s $280,030 is a 390 percent increase over Gibb’s FY82 Salary; CPI at 202

In 1972 new assistant professors made about $10,000 and President Ernest Hartung made about $30,000. When President Richard Gibb hired in 1977, his salary had risen to four times that of entry level faculty. Faculty complaints became more vocal when Elizabeth Zinser’s FY 94 salary was $125,039, five times entry level salaries. Zinser promised that her "high tide" wage would float all faculty boats, but instead our boats have been swamped. The differential with entry level faculty has now risen to seven times.

Across the Board Raises before Merit Pay; otherwise Many Faculty Lose Pay to Inflation

The Hoover administration committed itself to "across the board increases" for "all employees showing at least satisfactory performance." This promise stands first in a list that includes promotions, merit pay, and equity adjustments. The AFT position has always been that as a long as salaries do not keep up with the cost of living, then merit pay is a moot point. When legislative raises are applied according to merit, many faculty end up with pays cuts because of the decline in general buying power.  Merit pay must be funded by separate appropriations.

Collective Bargaining is the Only Answer

During the late 1960s there was a large expansion of our public higher education system. This was good for educational opportunity, but bad in the way that this system developed according to a business model. University presidents became less like academic leaders and more like CEOs, and their salaries, as well as those of their management teams, have skyrocketed. A natural response to the industrialization of the university was the rise of faculty unions. They now represent a large majority of faculty in states where collective bargaining is allowed. Idaho, unfortunately, is not one of them.

A central feature of these contracts is a salary step system that guarantees cost of living increases as well as raises above that in good years. If UI faculty had gone for our salary step proposal in 1976 (see Table I), we would now be at the top of our peers rather than at the bottom. Furthermore, faculty without "market value"–those in the library, humanities, and social sciences--would be making a decent professional wage.

Sincerely,

Dale Graden, President                                                     History (graden@uidaho.edu)  

Lynne Haagensen, Vice President                                     Art (lynneh@uidaho.edu)  

Nick Gier, Secretary                                                           Philosophy (ngier@uidaho.edu)

Bob Dickow, Treasurer                                                      Music (dickow@uidaho.edu)

Local 3215, American Federation of Teachers                         

TABLE I: UI FACULTY SALARY STEP SYSTEM (UIS³)  

UIS³-7: Instructors and Lectures.  All part-time faculty would join the scale and their salaries would be prorated; UIS³-8: Senior Instructors.  Any faculty member who has served satisfactorily at UIS³-7 for ten years would be promoted to this rank and would be eligible for tenure; Senior Instructors who perform satisfactorily for ten years will then move to UIS³-9. UIS³-9: Assistant Professor; UIS³-10 &11: Associate Professor; UIS³-12&13: Full Professor; UIS³-14&15: Senior Professor.  New Rank based on superior teaching and research.

Adapted from Seattle-Tacoma GS Salary Schedules at http://www.opm.gov/oca/06tables/ indexGS.asp 

TABLE II  AVERAGE SALARY BY RANK  1982-2007
Compared to National Average of Research II Institution Salaries
175 percent Increase for Full Professors Over 25 Years; Consumer Price Index at 202

TABLE III: PEER INSTITUTIONS BY RANK & ACADEMIC YEAR SALARIES (2005-2006)

Full Professors are 15% behind; Associates, 12%; Assistants, 11%; Instructors, 1%

TABLE IV: IDAHO STATE, BOISE STATE, AND LEWIS-CLARK STATE (2005-06)

TABLE V: ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES (from UI Budget Books)
274% Increase in Eight Positions Over 25 Years; first number is raise from FY06 to FY07