[Vision2020] Runaway Train 2007: UI Administrative Salaries Outstrip Faculty by 99%

[Donovan Arnold]

Nick,
   
  Maybe they would have more money for faculty and staff if some of the staff was working while at work instead of playing around on the Internet and making Mp3s.
   
  The only people underpaid at UI are the lectures and assistant professors. Many of the others are grossly overpaid. 
   
  Donovan
nickgier at adelphia.net wrote:
  Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary for tomorrow. Our own Tom Hansen has expertly posted all my commentaries with MP3 files at www.NickGier.com. Thanks, Tom.

Nick Gier

Runaway Train 2007: UI Administrative Salaries Outstrip Faculty by 99 Percent

Nick Gier, President, Higher Education Council
Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO

For the complete 2007 salary survey just go to http://users. adelphia.net/~nickgier/salary07.htm.

When I arrived at the University of Idaho in 1972, new assistant professors made $10,000 and President Ernest Hartung made $30,000. When President Richard Gibb was hired in 1977, his salary had risen to four times that of entry level faculty. 

Faculty complaints became more vocal when President Elizabeth Zinser's 1993 salary was five times entry level salaries. Zinser promised that her "high tide" wage would float all faculty boats, but instead our boats have been swamped. Or to switch to another metaphor, the faculty train has been left on a side track.

President Tim White's salary of $280,030 is a whopping 390 percent increase over President Gibb’s 1982 salary. The differential with entry level faculty has now risen to seven times.

In the past 25 years administrative salaries in eight positions have risen 274 percent while salaries for full professors have gone up 175 percent. I'll do the math for you: that's a 99 percent difference. The consumer price index for period was 202, so that means that full professors are 27 percent behind the CPI, while their bosses are 72 percent ahead. 

To White's credit he did, this year, manage to fund an average 7.7 percent while keeping administrative raises to 2.2 percent. There are, however, substantial salary deficiencies by discipline. 

Here is the percentage lag for full professors in ten departments: 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%); and history (-29%).

During the past ten years, 37 faculty in 11 disciplines have moved 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 UI ranks third from bottom among 19 peer institutions, and our associate and assistant professors rank last. Full professors in the top four peer institutions make nearly $27,000 more per year than their UI counterparts. 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. 

During the late 1960s there was a large expansion of our public higher education system. This was good for educational opportunity, but bad for the way in which 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. Surprise, surprise: Idaho 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, 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.



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