K-State Faculty Salary Data Analysis by College, Department, and Discipline
(with K-State’s IPEDS Comparison Institutions)
Summary Overview
October 2012
I. Introduction
Competitive compensation is key to recruiting and retaining the talented and high performing,
diverse workforce envisioned in K-State 2025. The Visionary Plan calls for competitive
compensation for all employees within the next ten years. Therefore, a focus on developing a
long-range compensation improvement plan with specific targeted goals and strategies over a
number of years is imperative.
During the summer 2012, the President and Provost requested additional faculty salary analysis
data for further evaluating K-State’s competitive compensation in comparison to our peer
institutions. Their request included faculty salary by rank compared to our peers, which was
completed and provided to Faculty Senate and shared during the college and major unit visits
this fall. In addition, they requested faculty salary data by rank, college, department, and
discipline, which are provided in this report.
This report was prepared by Kelli Cox and Nancy Baker (Planning and Analysis), Jan Middendorf
and Cindy Shuman (Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation), and Lynn Carlin (Office of
the Provost) to support further K-State 2025 planning.
II. Process
The data tables in this report present faculty salary data by rank and discipline for K-State and
our 10 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) comparison institutions, which
include the seven K-State 2025 benchmark institutions. The institutions are:
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Auburn University
Clemson University
Colorado State University
Iowa State University
Louisiana State University
North Carolina State University
Oklahoma State University
Oregon State University
University of Massachusetts – Amherst
Washington State University
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These IPEDS comparison institutions were chosen using the following criteria:
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must be a land grant institution without a Medical School or a Law School,
with Undergraduate FTE between 14,000 – 25,000,
Graduate FTE between 3,000 – 7,000, and
represent broad geographic distribution as a group.
Data in this report come from the Faculty Salary Survey by Discipline, a special project directed
by Oklahoma State University’s Office of Institutional Research and Information Management.
The survey originated from the need for current salary information for university management
and is widely used as a respected source for national institutional salary comparisons.
Accordingly, the results from the annual survey can serve as a tool to discuss and examine
salary budgets. The Oklahoma State University Faculty Salary Survey utilizes the Classification of
Instructional Programs (CIP) structure for data reporting. CIP codes were developed by the
National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) for use as a reference tool to assist in the
collection, reporting, and interpretation of data about instructional programs. While the coding
categories do provide consistent structure for reporting data, institutional variations in
reporting data by CIP codes make some comparisons difficult.
Institutions have the option to report CIP code data at the 2-, 4- or 6-digit level. The 2-digit
codes are the broadest categories (i.e., 01-Agriculture or 13-Education), while the 6-digit codes
provide more detail or specificity about a particular discipline. For example, 01 is the code for
Agriculture, 01.11 is the code for Plant Sciences, and 01.1103 is the code for Horticulture
Science.
This analysis includes a set of tables by college, department, and discipline. It also includes
seven tables by discipline in cases where the data are reported under different CIP codes:
architecture, biological sciences, computing and information systems, education, family studies,
social sciences, and visual and performing arts. These serve as examples of “rolling up” the
data by discipline to a broader CIP code digit level in order to capture data from additional
comparison institutions reporting by disciplines using different CIP codes than K-State.
Definitions and Considerations
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All salaries which are reported in the survey are based on a 9-10 month academic year
salary. Twelve-month employees’ salaries are converted to 9 months for comparison
purposes. Any compensation for summer academic work, add pay, and fringe or other
benefits is not included in the salary data.
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Only full-time employees (professor to instructor rank, 50% or more time allocated to
instruction or research) are reported in the survey.
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Departmental names and college structures differ across institutions; faculty within the
same discipline might command different salaries in different departments or colleges.
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In many cases, K-State and our peers are using different CIP codes when reporting
discipline data. This results in tables that appear to have incomplete data. In those
cases, notes have been added to identify the codes that are used by our peer
institutions. The seven “rolled up” tables by discipline have also been provided to offer
some comparison data in those cases where the tables may appear as incomplete.
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The Oklahoma State University’s Faculty Salary Survey only includes library faculty at
universities with library schools. Therefore, K-State library faculty are not included in the
Survey. K-State Libraries maintains its own faculty comparison data.
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K-State Research and Extension faculty are not included in the data because universities
do not report extension faculty to the Oklahoma State University’s Faculty Salary
Survey.
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The School for Leadership Studies faculty are not being reported to the Oklahoma State
University’s Faculty Salary Survey and are therefore not included in this report.
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For 2011-2012, Oregon State University did not submit data to the Faculty Salary Survey.
In cases where data from Oregon State are included, the data shown in the tables are
from 2010-2011 and, therefore, have not been included in the calculations of average or
median salary.
Data columns, rows, and notes reported in the tables include:
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“Count” which refers to the number of faculty members whose salary was included to
compute the average salary.
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“Average salary” is the mean of the salaries for all the faculty in a given academic rank
at a particular institution.
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“Rank” orders the average salaries by institution from highest to lowest. Please note
that the salaries shown by rank do not always include 11 institutions as some schools do
not report faculty in a particular CIP code or academic rank.
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The row titled “Average w/o K-State” shows the average salary for all of the comparison
institutions reporting a particular CIP code. K-State’s data are not included in these
calculations.
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The row titled “Median w/o K-State” shows the 50th percentile of the average salaries
for the comparison institutions. This means that half of the average salaries fall below
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this value, and the other half are above it. K-State’s data are not included in these
calculations.
III. Limitations of the Data
There are many factors that may contribute to differences in salary statistics, making it difficult
to draw inferences from these data. Market forces, non-monetary compensation and benefits,
and cost of living differences are often not reflected in the data.
Comparisons across institutions or across units within institutions can be complicated by
unequal distributions in key dimensions such as discipline, rank, length of time in rank, and
length of employment. For example, the use of the average salary as a reported statistic is
susceptible to the influence of extreme distributional differences in rank or discipline in the
population.
These tables, while with limitations described above, provide a useful context for informing
compensation discussions of salaries at K-State and will likely prompt further inquiry that would
be useful. It is hoped that these data will facilitate further analysis and dialogue across the
university as we continue the conversation about developing targets and strategies to improve
competitive compensation at K-State.
IV. Future Considerations
While the data tables in this report present a variety of perspectives on K-State faculty salaries,
they also generate additional questions that may need to be addressed in order to provide the
most useful comparisons for on-going planning and analysis as we track progress towards KState 2025 goals. These questions, which transcend the current initiative to develop a faculty
compensation improvement plan, relate to CIP codes currently being reported for some
disciplines and departments.
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Are we reporting our faculty salary data using the CIP codes that will yield the best
comparison data? In those cases where a number of our comparison institutions are
reporting using different CIP codes, should we review our current reporting framework?
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We have faculty within the same discipline on different campuses being reported with
different CIP codes, which impacts the comparisons internally and with our peer
institutions. For example, our Social Work faculty at the Salina and Manhattan
campuses are “coded” differently. As our three campus system evolves, we are likely to
see increasing numbers of faculty within the same discipline on our different campuses.
In reviewing salary comparison data and determining targets for improved
compensation, should K-State faculty within the same discipline regardless of campus
home be treated the same for salary reporting purposes?
It is hoped that these data will be useful in further conversations about future data reporting as
well as faculty compensation.
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