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DRAFT
Working Paper on Faculty Compensation Issues
California Lutheran University
May, 2006
Prepared by the Deans Council:
Terry Cannings, Dean, School of Education
Tim Hengst, Interim Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
Chuck Maxey, Dean, School of Business
Leanne Neilson, Associate Provost
In the current strategic planning process, CLU has made a commitment to academic quality. We need
now to manage strategically to ensure that we commit and expend resources in ways that will be most
effective in achieving our goals. In part, this means recruiting and retaining the highest quality faculty
members we can, adequately supporting their work and professional development, sustaining an equitable
distribution of responsibilities and rewards, and encouraging and rewarding excellence. Doing so will
better align our practices with our goals. Failing to do so will waste institutional resources and lessen the
chances that we will be successful.
It is singularly important that we begin to address faculty compensation issues on a strategic basis and
attend to them first in the budget development process. An institutional commitment to specific levels of
salary increases should be treated as “fact-based” in the budgeting process rather than as a more residual
category. However, it is equally important that our focus be on total compensation and compensation
policy and not just on base salary levels.
The term “total compensation” refers to all of the financial resources expended by the University to
reward and support faculty members in carrying out their institutional duties. This includes base salary,
fringe benefits, professional support, paid leave (sabbatical), assigned or reassigned time for academic
administration or research, etc. In many of these areas, our current faculty compensation policies and
practices are inadequate in supporting and reinforcing our institutional commitment to building academic
quality.
This paper outlines a list of issues that need to be addressed in the context of total compensation and the
strategic management of our human capital related resources.
Base Compensation and Salary Increases
1.
Base pay
Base faculty compensation is low compared to appropriate comparison groups. It is most
seriously deficient at the full professor level (see Appendix A).
Recommendation: Develop a multi-year set of goals and identified funding sources for
increases in overall levels of base pay. The distribution of salary increases should reflect
changing market conditions, institutional priorities and merit (see below).
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One important element in such a multi-year approach should be setting goals and identifying
funding sources for annual increases in faculty base salaries on an institution-wide basis. Having
such a plan in place would reassure the faculty that salary considerations do indeed have a high
priority within the institution and that there is a sincere commitment on the part of the senior
institutional leadership and the board to address our needs in this area.
2. Increases at Promotion and Tenure.
For at least 10 years, faculty have received a $1,500 increase in salary for promotion and
for tenure. These are relatively small in amount (2%-3% increase) and therefore not
significant motivators nor rewards for significant professional accomplishment. Faculty
members perceive (correctly) that institutional expectations for their job contributions are
increasing and also that, as a result, standards for tenure and promotion are becoming
more rigorous. Rewards should increase commensurately both to help enhance the
incomes of those who do their work with excellence and also to convey and support the
message that quality counts and higher quality counts more.
Recommendation: The amount of salary increases granted at promotion and the awarding
of tenure should be made larger and more meaningful. Examples of 5% or 10% increases
are below.
Rank
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Professor
Average Salary
$53,200
$63,100
$72,300
5% Increase
$2,660
$3,155
$3,615
10% Increase
$5,320
$6,310
$7,230
3. Gender Based Differences in Pay
Context: Across the nation, women faculty members earn less compensation than do
their male colleagues. In a recent and typical year, the average (mean) salary for all
women in the professoriate nationally was 21.8 percent less than that for men.i
The reasons for this continue to be intensely researched and investigated. Essentially there are
two lines of argument. One suggests that differences in pay between men and women can be
accounted for by differences in their human capital (for example, greater research productivity,
faster advancement in rank, or more years of service). The other argument is that there is
systematic or at least pervasive discrimination against women faculty members.
Both arguments appear to have some merit. One recent comprehensive empirical study
indicates that about two-thirds of the pay differences between male and female faculty
members nationally can be explained for differences in their human capital factors and
can, therefore, be regarded as objectively based and equitable. However, the other one
third of the pay difference cannot be explained by these factors, which suggests that bias
may be in play.ii Over a large number of studies, the unexplained portion of the salary
differences appears to be in the 6 to 10 percent range.
The CLU Experience: Questions have been raised among the faculty regarding gender
equity in faculty salaries at CLU. Based on the 2006-07 contracts, the Assistant Professor
female salaries are slightly above male salaries. The Associate Professor and Full
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Professor female salaries are lower than male salaries. The following table summarizes
the salary differences:
Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Professor
CLU
Gender Differences
-1.1%
8.4%
6.7%
Nationwide
Gender Differences
7.3%
6.6%
12.2%
Recommendation: The most effective defense against gender discrimination in faculty
pay appears to be the adoption of gender-neutral salary setting policies and practices and
a firm institutional commitment to equal merit based access for men and women to
appointment, promotion, tenure and pay.iii It is antithetical to our culture as a community
of scholar-teachers and as a church related institution to abide discriminatory practices of
any kind. CLU should explicitly and affirmatively renew its commitment to these
principles.
4. Discipline-Based Differences in Pay
Attracting, retaining, motivating and rewarding fairly high-performing faculty requires
that we pay close attention to issues of discipline based equity. Over the past decade,
CLU has necessarily (if grudgingly) moved in the direction of paying more attention to
national and regional discipline-based faculty pay differentials (see Appendix B). We
have done so more adequately at the entry level (Instructor and Assistant Professor) than
we have at more senior ranks. And, we have done so more adequately within the arts and
humanities than we have in the sciences and professional programs.
One result of these changes is that we have been effective in recruiting in national labor
markets in the humanities, arts and social sciences while we have generally not been
effective in national markets in business, education or the physical sciences. Another
result is that professional discipline faculty members are disproportionately underpaid
relative to their colleagues in other institutions than are faculty members in the arts and
humanities.
Finally, senior level faculty members across many disciplines have not advanced in
salary proportionately relative to their junior colleagues. In the instances in which these
faculty members are women, these discrepancies give the appearance of being gender
based inequities when, in reality, they may be discipline based inequities.
Recommendation: The University needs to develop policies on rank and discipline-based
pay, implement them, and address and resolve current instances of inequity. Professional
and science discipline faculty members should not be disproportionately undercompensated. Many institutions have developed salary policies, guidelines and salary
scales to implement equitable approaches to pay across disciplines. CLU should
investigate the practices of other relevant institutions and give serious consideration to
adopting such policies and practices here.
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5. Merit Increases
Current faculty compensation policies and practices give no meaningful weight to
considerations of performance, or, merit. This seems fundamentally inconsistent with
institutional goals and strategy that give excellence and enhanced academic quality
primary roles in institutional advancement.
Management practices need to be made consistent with goals and objectives. If we are
striving for excellence, then excellence should be rewarded. This may well mean seeking
to increase the size of the pool of funds available for faculty increases each year so that
considerations of both cost of living and merit can be taken into account. Whatever the
size of the pools available, more attention and weight need to be given to performance.
This also means that expectations for faculty performance need to be more clearly
defined and that appropriate evaluation processes are put into place.
Recommendation: Consistent with its commitment to building academic quality, the
University should move affirmatively to establish and implement stronger merit-based
pay policies and practices and should commit to generating sufficient financial resources
to pay faculty members fairly with respect to both cost of living changes and meritorious
performance.
Housing
Housing is an obvious and pressing institutional problem and it is hoped that the current attention
being paid to this issue by the University administration and the Board will result in concrete
action in the near future. Helping faculty meet the demands of the regional housing market is and
will remain central to our strategy of seeking to attract and retain high quality faculty members.
Cost of Living: Future increases in base pay (salary pools) will need to take into account
increases in the cost of living. Data for the Los Angeles regional area over the past six years
indicates that the cost of living as computed by the US government has increased on an average
of 3.38 percent per year. (see Appendix C). Meaningful increases in real wages (adjusted for
purchasing power) can only occur if salary increases pools substantially exceed changes in the
Consumer Price Index.
Housing Costs: Over the past decade, housing prices in Ventura County and adjacent regions
have risen substantially and are increasingly a substantial economic barrier to the attraction and
retention of new faculty members. The data in Appendix C documents the alarming rates of
increase in prices (the median house price in the County), the annual percentage increases in that
median price, and the precipitous drop in the proportion of county residents now able to afford
the median priced house. (The affordability index describes the percent of families within the
county whose annual income would allow them to purchase the median price house. Since 1999,
that percentage in Ventura County has fallen from 41 percent to 13.3 percent in 2005.)
Recommendation: We should develop near-term policies for the provision of faculty housing
assistance and be as aggressive as circumstances permit in moving ahead with a longer-term
program such as creating faculty housing units on the campus.
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Building a System for Managing Total Compensation
While campus discussions frequently focus on the salary component of compensation, the reality is that
the University also spends substantial amounts of money on other elements of compensation such as
insurance programs, pension contributions, tuition remission, and others. When basic fringe benefits are
taken into account, the actual cost to the University for an annual faculty employment contract is about
138% of base salary. Many faculty members earn additional compensation through summer or overload
teaching and other assignments. Questions we should be asking ourselves include: how well are we
managing this overall body of expense, and are we getting the maximum perceived value from non-salary
expenditures?
1. Creating Perceived Value
It is well established that levels of employee morale and motivation are significantly
affected by the perceived value of compensation, not the actual dollars expended. To gain
the maximum value for the money employers are paying for employees, employees must
be aware of and value the pay and benefits being provided.
We can do more to enhance the perceived value of our total compensation expenditures
by making faculty members and other employees more aware of their total compensation
packages. We should be sure that we provide as much flexibility in the benefits offered so
that they match the needs and preferences of employees in various life stages and
situations. We should monitor our relative standing among other appropriate institutions
in terms of total compensation as well as average base salary. We do make some efforts
in these areas (and in many respects our total compensation packages have very favorable
elements), but we could do so more thoroughly and more systematically. Getting the best
value from the total compensation resources expended requires ongoing scrutiny and
adaptation.
Recommendation: The University should design and implement a more proactive total
compensation management system and communicate the specifics to employees.
2. Load Assignments and Overload Pay
CLU currently operates from a rather traditional academic employment model under
which faculty members are contractually engaged for only the nine-month academic year
at a given base salary and benefits. Over time, however, the work of the University that
the faculty must do has grown considerably beyond the “default” employment parameters
of nine-months’ base pay in exchange for teaching 24 units and engaging in advising,
committee work and scholarship.
Many of our academic programs now operate on a year round basis, day and evening, in
multiple locations. As the number of programs grows, so does the need for academic
administration assignments. Achieving high enrollment targets increases the number of
required FTE (full-time equivalent) faculty teaching slots, yet the size of the full-time or
“core” faculty does not increase in proportion to program size or in terms of adding
faculty where new program demands are greatest. Low faculty base salaries and the
desire to place some reasonable quality limits on the proportion of teaching done by
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adjunct faculty members motivate faculty members to take on overload teaching
assignments and academic administrators to allow them (or encourage them) to do so.
At the same time, increasing expectations for faculty to be teaching in graduate programs,
to be productively engaged in scholarship, and to be actively participating in institutional
governance are creating needs to increase the amount of paid time for faculty members to
engage in these activities. Financial pressures limiting our ability to add new full time or
core faculty lines compound these problems.
Recommendations: Certainly, this is a complex area that requires considerable further
investigation and discussion. The following is a preliminary and only partial list of goals
or recommendations related to these issues:
o
Reduce faculty members’ reliance on overload teaching as a basic
supplement to base salary levels. We should reduce the amount of overload
teaching at the same time that we increase base salaries to a more market
appropriate position.
o
Determine whether there should be load differentials for graduate and
undergraduate teaching.
o
Develop more consistent, viable and equitable policies for compensating
faculty for academic program administration and other similar assignment,
whether this is through reassigned time or supplemental compensation.
o
Add sufficient numbers of new faculty lines, full time or part time, to meet
the real staffing needs of our programs.
o
In the academic planning and budget development processes, make realistic
assessments of and provisions for the additional staffing needs and other
costs that are necessarily associated with program growth.
o
Carefully assess our current allocation of faculty slots, assignments, and
related expenditures to match desired growth in programs quality and in
meeting the needs of specific programmatic areas.
Developing the appropriate information, analysis and policies in these areas will require
the participation and close collaboration of leaders from the academic and administrative
sectors of the University and active endorsement and commitment from the Board.
Adequately Supporting Professional Development
Over time, as expectations for faculty productivity in scholarship are more fully implemented and
as the research orientation of the faculty grows, we must continue to add resources to support the
faculty in this work and also for developmental support in their on-going efforts to refine their
teaching skills and classroom effectiveness. The steps taken this past year to supplement the
existing pool of faculty development funds with a base line provision of up to $1,000 for core
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faculty members to attend appropriate professional meetings were important both symbolically
and in their practical effect.
We need to do more in future years and become more focused in our allocation of professional
development monies. We should become more systematic about tying their allocation to
institutional recognition of academic quality and to individual faculty records of activity,
productivity, and achievement. Again, there is an important role for considerations of merit.
Given our institutional profile and objectives, it might make sense to build a program targeting
professional development resources into the following general categories of need (or
opportunity):
1.
Support for new faculty members
We need to keep young faculty members engaged into their regional and national
professional associations and provide opportunities for them to build and sustain viable
programs of scholarship. This will require direct financial support for travel, meeting
registration fees and expenses, research related expenses, support in identifying grant
opportunities and in preparing competitive proposals. It also has implications for load and
assignment profiles. Many institutions provide reduced teaching loads for new, young
faculty members and/or summer support for research activities.
2. Support for more senior faculty members to build or rebuild scholarship skills
As expectations change, we need to support the efforts of faculty who wish to move from
a purely or primarily teaching profile to engage or re-engage research activities in their
disciplines. It would be reasonable for the institution to develop criteria for the allocation
of such “re-development” funds that would include elements of centrality to institutional
mission and planning, programmatic development, and potential. For example, if we
embrace the involvement of undergraduate students in research as an institutional
hallmark, faculty development fund allocation criteria could have that as a priority.
3. Grants of time and/or money could be rewards (awards) for meritorious
scholarly performance
We currently have rewards for teaching excellence; we could also have them for
scholarly/creative productivity. In addition, there is a need to review the current policies
and practices related to the award of sabbatical leave. What will be the future demand for
sabbaticals? Do we have adequate funding to support them? Should sabbatical be a right
earned by time-in-grade, or should greater emphasis be placed on the scholarly merit of
sabbatical proposals? And, should their awarding become more competitive? Should
there be more stringent reviews of and requirements for productivity?
Recommendation: We need to undertake a review of institutional practices – our own and others
– as the basis for developing a set of policies and practices that will better support faculty
development and scholarly productivity and that will also ensure greater return on these
institutional investments.
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i
Scott Jaschik. “Explaining the Gender Gap in Pay,” Inside Higher Education, April 13, 2006:
http://insidehighered.coon/layout/set/print/news/2006/04/13/gender
ii
Paul D. Umbach, “Gender Equity in the Academic Labor Market: An Analysis of Academic
Disciplines,” Annual Meeting of the American educational Research Association, San Francisco,
CA April 7-11, 2006.
iii
See for example, Kathleen Burke, Kevin Duncan, Lisa Krall, Deborah Spencer, “Gender
differences in faculty pay and salary compression,” The Social Science Journal. 42 (2005) 165181.