Faculty group at UA presses for pay raises

Report says salary increases trail those of administrators

Information about UA faculty salaries.
Information about UA faculty salaries.

FAYETTEVILLE -- A resolution approved by University of Arkansas at Fayetteville faculty members calls for the university to make increases in their pay a top priority after years of faculty raises lagging behind pay increases for administrators.

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UA's faculty senate voted in favor of a "Resolution for Fairness in Faculty Salaries" at its meeting Wednesday.

The resolution "strongly urges" UA's administration to keep "average administration raises no more than average tenure-track faculty raises." It also states that UA's average pay for professors and associate professors "for many years" has fallen short of the average pay for faculty as reported by the Southern University Group, a body of schools considered by the group to be comparable to UA.

The resolution does not force any policy changes. Laura Jacobs, chief of staff for Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz, wrote in an email that Steinmetz considers it a "big priority" for UA to have "competitive" faculty salaries.

"We will make efforts to better align administrator salary increases with faculty salary increases," Jacobs wrote. "We are currently looking at administrative salary-setting policy changes to achieve this alignment."

A committee report for UA's faculty senate last month outlined trends in faculty pay. Average annual salaries have increased, with a faculty member at the rank of professor or higher earning $121,589, on average, though the pay rate varies significantly from college to college within UA. Two years earlier, the average was $115,441.

But the report stated that in five out of the last six years, administrators on average earned larger percentage increases in their pay compared with tenure-track faculty members.

The analysis excluded UA faculty members or administrators who received a promotion. It also excluded new employees who took over for people with the same titles. The analysis, for example, excluded Steinmetz's a̶n̶n̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶a̶l̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ salary and deferred compensation of* $700,000 after taking over for G. David Gearhart, who as chancellor earned $339,010 in salary plus more than $220,000 in deferred compensation.

In the current fiscal year, administrators keeping their same roles on average received a 2.8 percent raise compared with the previous year, the faculty senate report said. Tenure-track faculty members keeping similar roles earned a 2.2 percent raise.

The report also broke down administrators into three separate categories. For five out of the six years included in the report, UA's top administrators -- a group that includes the chancellor, provost and vice chancellors -- earned the highest percentage raise or tied for the highest percentage raise. The top year for their percentage raise was fiscal 2012, when the group on average earned a percentage raise of 6.1 percent.

In the current fiscal year, the top administrative group, classified as administrator 1, received a 4.1 percent raise, on average.

The faculty senate report did not include average salary data for administrators, but information on "per capita spending." A UA spokesman, Mark Rushing, said in an email that the salary data for administrators excluded some information so as to differ from a true average salary.

For category 1 administrators, a group of the university's highest-ranking administrators, the "per capita spending" in the current fiscal year was $266,763.

The report also noted difference between the median salary and the average salary for tenure-track faculty members.

The median salary for professors, at $107,716, is considerably less than the average, according to the report. Similarly, the median salary for associate professors, $77,838, was less than the average salary of $86,718, and the median salary for assistant professors, $68,200, was less than the average of $78,761.

Metro on 05/05/2016

CORRECTION: This story imprecisely described the compensation of University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Chancellor Joe Steinmetz. He earns $700,000 yearly in salary and deferred compensation.

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