K-State Faculty Salary Data Analysis by College, Department, and Discipline
Summary Overview
2014 - 2015
I. Introduction
Competitive compensation is key to recruiting and retaining the talented and high performing, diverse workforce envisioned in K-State 2025. In summer 2012, the President and Provost requested faculty salary analyses by college, department, discipline, and rank to aid in evaluating
K-State's competitive compensation in comparison to our peer institutions. The first report, K-
State Faculty Salary Data Analysis by College, Department, and Discipline , was completed in
September 2012 based on data reported in November 2011.
At the administration’s request, this report has been updated annually. This fourth annual report provides the Fall 2014 faculty salary data by rank, college, department, and discipline. The analyses reported here were prepared by the Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation
(OEIE) to support further K-State 2025 planning and reporting and are made available at
( http://www.k-state.edu/2025/progress-reports/faculty-salary-data-analysis/2014-2015/ ).
The overall report is organized by the Summary Overview and three additional sections providing the following information.
Section 1: Summary Overview . This overview includes an explanation of the methodology used to compile the report, considerations and limitations of the data, and the notable highlights from the past four years.
Section 2: Peer Salary Comparison Charts by Rank . This section includes six charts: the peer salary comparison charts for faculty by all ranks for this year (2014-2015 ) and the charts from the previous years ( 2013-2014 , 2012-2013 and 2011-2012).
Similar to last year, the report also includes a table presenting the overall rank comparisons for
Tenured/Tenure Track faculty only.
Section 3: K-State Faculty Mean Salary Comparison by Department and Rank . This chart identifies departments in which K-State faculty mean salary by rank meets or exceeds the mean salary of K-State’s peer comparison institutions. For 2014-2015, this analysis was also conducted for just the Tenured/Tenure Track faculty, and this chart is also included in this section of the report.
Section 4: Peer Salary Comparison Data by College, Department, Discipline and Rank . This section represents the bulk of the report as it provides salary comparison data tables by rank and discipline for the majority of the departments at K-State. For 2014-2015, a new set of tables was added in this section that present the Tenured/Tenure Track faculty only. Caveats related to this data reporting are included in the “Definitions
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II.
Process and Considerations” section, as well as in the footnotes for each chart by discipline, where appropriate.
The data tables in this report present faculty salary data by rank and discipline as reported in
November 2014 by K-State and 10 peer comparison institutions.
The peer institutions are:
 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
These peer comparison institutions were chosen by the university in 2012 using the following criteria:
 must be a land grant institution without a Medical School or a Law School,
 with Undergraduate FTE between 14,000 – 25,000,
 with 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
(OSU-IRIM). The survey 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.
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The CIP taxonomy is a hierarchy organized on 3 levels:
 2-digit codes define the most general groupings of related programs. (XX)
 4-digit codes define intermediate groupings of programs that have comparable content and objectives. (XX.XX)
 6-digit codes define specific instructional programs. (XX.XXXX)
For example, 01 is the code for Agriculture, 01.11 is the code for Plant Sciences as a subset of
Agriculture, and 01.1103 is the code for Horticulture Science as a subset of Plant Sciences. For the Faculty Salary Study, institutions have the option to report CIP data at the 2-, 4- or 6-digit level, although OSU-IRIM encourages reporting at the 6-digit codes.
The 2014-2015 analysis includes a set of tables by college, department, and discipline. In many cases, K-State and our peers are using different CIP codes when reporting discipline data. In order to most accurately reflect salary data from all of the institutions, the tables were generated by first starting with the CIP code reported by K-State (typically a 6-digit CIP). After a review of data from the other institutions, it was sometimes possible to “roll up” to the 4-digit CIP for more complete reporting. For example, K-State reported CIP 010901 – Animal Sciences, General, which is a subset of CIP 010900 – Animal Sciences. By choosing the 4-digit CIP, the tables include all 10 peer institutions, presenting a more comprehensive view of the data. In those cases, notes have been added to the tables to identify the codes that are used by K-State and our peer institutions.
As part of the data request process for this year’s project, K-State needed to obtain permission from each of the peer institutions to release their faculty salary data through the Oklahoma State
University survey. All peer institutions agreed to release their data; however, Washington State
University approved the use of their data in reports only in aggregate. Therefore, the Washington
State University data have been suppressed in the tables included in this report, but their values were calculated in the ranking of institutions as part of the overall analysis.
In 2012, instructions from Oklahoma State University changed how institutions could report their data in the 2012-2013 Faculty Salary by Discipline Survey. The change allowed institutions to separate their tenured/tenure track faculty members from their non-tenure track faculty members. The 2014-2015 survey again had this reporting option. However, this reporting feature was not required. While K-State did report both tenured/tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, not all of our peer institutions submitted data with these designations. As a result, it was only possible to identify only tenured/tenure track faculty in eight of the peer institutions.
Clemson did identify their faculty as tenured/tenure track in the data file for 2014-2015.
III.
Considerations and Definitions
 Faculty salary data in this report were collected in fall 2014 for the 2014-2015 academic year. As such, this report reflects implementation of the first two years of the three-year faculty salary compensation improvement plan announced by the President in June 2013.
These data reflect changes in salaries resulting from Targeted Faculty Salary
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Enhancements, Faculty Promotions and Professorial Performance Awards, two-thirds of the Faculty Promotion Enhancement (5-Year Backfill), and Merit Salary Increases.

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.
 Only full-time employees (professor to instructor rank, 50% or more time allocated to instruction and/or research; public service is included, but not 100% public service) are reported in the survey. For details regarding how K-State reported these data, please refer to page 6.
 Departmental names and college structures differ across institutions; faculty within the same discipline might command different salaries in different departments or colleges.
 Salary data is reported to Oklahoma State by CIP code (discipline) rather than by department. Because institutions may use differing CIPs for similar departments, some reports aggregate data from multiple CIPs.
 Oklahoma State only provides CIP codes where more than one institution reported a particular CIP. The following departments are not included in the faculty salary report as two or more institutions did not report to the associated CIP or CIPs: o Agriculture – Communications and Agricultural Education o Agriculture – Grain Science and Industry o Engineering – Architectural Engineering and Construction Science o Arts & Sciences – American Ethnic Studies o Arts and Sciences – Dance (School of Music, Theatre and Dance – Music and
Theatre are reported) o Arts and Sciences – Women’s Studies

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 Arts, Sciences and Business faculty at K-State Salina have been reported under CIP
240100 (Liberal Arts and Sciences/liberal studies). While three other peer institutions also report this CIP code, this may result in a broad comparison. As programs continue to develop at the K-State Salina campus, additional review of this classification may be helpful.
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
K-State reported CIP 512401 Veterinary Medicine, while some of our peers reported CIP
512500 – Veterinary Biomedical and Clinical Sciences. Both numbers are reported in the data table for the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Faculty in interdisciplinary units at K-State, are typically associated with a particular department or college and are included in those CIP codes as assigned. As a result, the following interdisciplinary units at K-State are not uniquely identified in the faculty salary data: o Agriculture – Food Science Institute o Arts & Sciences – International and Area Studies o Human Ecology – Gerontology o Human Ecology – General Human Ecology o Leadership Studies – School of Leadership Studies
 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.
 K-State Research and Extension as a unit is not included in the data. However, individual faculty members who are assigned to an academic discipline unit with an appointment of at least 50% teaching and/or research are included in those disciplines’ numbers.
Data columns, rows, and notes reported in the tables :

“Count” refers to the number of full-time faculty members whose salary was included to compute the average salary.

“Average salary” is the mean of the salaries for the entire faculty in a given academic rank at a particular institution.
 “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.

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.

The row titled “Median w/o K-State” shows the 50 th percentile of the average salaries for the comparison institutions. This means that half of the average salaries fall below this value, and the other half are above it. K-State’s data are not included in these calculations.
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
“New Assistant Professor” is a subset of the “Assistant Professors” reported, reflecting those faculty members hired between November 1, 2013 and October 31, 2014.
IV.
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.
Institutional differences in categorizing faculty and reporting procedures may also impact the comparisons across schools. For example, some institutions may report adjunct faculty or clinical research faculty, while others do not. Particularly in the instructor rank, there may also be differences in what is considered “full-time” or “part-time” across the institutions.
In addition, differences in the groups reported can change over time. For example, before Fall
2012, K-State included tenured/tenure track faculty, clinical faculty, visiting faculty, and instructors in the numbers reported to the Oklahoma State study. Beginning Fall 2012 with the additional options for reporting, K-State added research assistant and research associate professors. However, in 2014, K-State did not report these research faculty, which resulted in a decrease in the number of non-tenure track faculty by 39 individuals from 2013. K-State reported the following groups in the data to the Oklahoma State study:

Tenured/tenure track faculty

Non-tenure track faculty o Instructors o Clinical faculty o Visiting faculty
The number of faculty reported by institution, most frequently non-tenure track, continues to fluctuate impacting average salaries and overall rankings. For example, Washington State
University reported 433 more faculty this year, after reporting 390 fewer faculty in 2013-14 compared to the previous year. Of these 433 additional faculty, 150 were at the instructor level,
19 were tenured/tenure track, and the remainder were non-tenure track, making it difficult to determine a trend if the total changes that much from year to year. This example illustrates how aggregate (all ranks) data can fluctuate, limiting the value of the comparison information, particularly looking at only a single year.
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V.
Data Highlights – Academic Years 2011-2012 to 2014-2015
The data tables in this report, while with limitations described above, can still provide a useful context for informing faculty compensation discussions and decision-making at K-State. In comparing the aggregate Peer Salary Comparison Charts by Ranks reports for Academic Years
2011-2012 through 2014-2015, a few highlights can be noted.
1.
The number and rank of faculty at K-State increased at every level from the 2011-2012 baseline year, as presented in the table below.
2.
For K-State, the average salaries for all ranks showed an increase from the 2011-2012 baseline year. As noted above, 2014-2015 was the first time that the data reflect implementation of the first two years of the three-year faculty salary compensation improvement plan announced by the President in June 2013.
2011-2012 to 2014-2015 All Faculty
Faculty
Rank
2011-2012 2013-2014 2014-2015 Changes since 2011 - 2012
Number
Avg.
Salary
Professor 372 $104,384
Associate 321 $73,628
Assistant
Instructor
Total
281
134
1108
$64,418
$46,274
$78,310
Number
394
331
337
161
1223
Avg.
Salary
$105,633
$76,405
$65,220
$47,031
$78,872
Number
390
330
298
166
1184
Avg.
Salary
$113,221
$80,317
$71,474
$49,764
$84,646
Change in
Number
18
9
17
32
76
Change in
Average
Salary
$8,837
$6,689
$7,056
$3,490
$6,336
3.
K-State’s placement in the overall rank order table, Peer Salary Comparison by Rank, went up from 10 in 2013-2014 to 9 in 2014-2015. Without instructors, K-State’s rank order stayed the same at 11 from 2013-2014 to 2014-2015. The following table represents the changes at each faculty rank level in comparison to the previous year. Fluctuations occur within the faculty ranks and vary at each level with some levels reporting a higher rank than K-State’s overall rank and others reporting a lower rank.
2011-2012 to 2014-2015 All Faculty
Faculty Rank
Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
Instructor
All ranks w/o instructors
2011-2012
8
11
11
4 n/a
2012-2013
8
10
11
5
10
2013-2014
11
10
11
5
11
2014-2015
10
11
10
5
11
Change in Rank
Higher by 1
Lower by 1
Higher by 1
Stayed the Same
Stayed the Same
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4.
As noted previously, with the additional reporting options allowed, K-State began reporting a broader range of faculty in the non-tenure track category, such as research assistant or research associate faculty. As many of the initiatives related to salary have been targeted to tenured/tenure track faculty, the following table presents just these data. Non-tenure track faculty are not included in these numbers. For K-State, the average salaries for all ranks of tenured/tenure track faculty showed increases from 2011-2012.
In addition, there were increases in the number of tenured/tenure track faculty at every rank, (e.g. professor, associate, and assistant professor) from 2011-2012.
Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty Only
Faculty
Rank
2011-2012 2014-2015
Changes since
2011 - 2012
Professor
Associate
Assistant
Total
Number
372
318
230
920
Avg. Salary
$104,282
$73,655
$65,225
$83,932
Number
389
325
251
965
Avg. Salary
$113,238
$80,249
$72,107
$91,430
Change in
Number
17
7
21
45
Change in
Salary
$8,956
$6,594
$6,882
$7,498
5.
In comparing the K-State Faculty Mean Salary Comparison by Department and Rank to
2013-2014, the number of departments with an associated CIP code in which K-State faculty mean salary by rank meets or exceeds the mean salary of peers increased in 2014-
2015 from the previous year.
All Faculty
K-State Departments with an associated CIP code
FY 2015 Totals
FY 2014 Totals:
FY 2013 Totals:
Professor
12/49
6/50
10/48
Associate
Professor
12/48
7/49
11/49
Assistant
Professor
20/50
11/51
13/49
Instructor
19/39
18/38
21/38
New
Assistant
Professor
7/24
7/31
9/31
6.
For 2014-2015, the number of departments with an associated CIP code in which K-State faculty mean salary by rank meets or exceeds the mean salary of peers was also done for just Tenured/Tenure Track faculty.
Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty Only
K-State Departments with an associated CIP code
FY 2015 Totals
Professor
12/47
Associate
Professor
8/46
Assistant
Professor
11/47
New Assistant
Professor
5/21
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It can be helpful to look at the departmental/disciplinary data included in this report as opposed to only the average comparisons when determining strategies to implement competitive compensation for all faculty. It is hoped that deans and department heads will find the more detailed information within the department/discipline charts in Sections 3 and 4 helpful as they make plans to address faculty salary issues within their areas, such as salary compression and inversion.
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