Average salary, full professor (doctoral level)*
University of Maryland, $154,200
Georgia Tech, $151,700
University of Alabama, $141,600
University of Iowa, $136,700
University of Florida, $133,700
University of Tennessee, $130,300
Georgia State University, $124,600
Louisiana State University, $117,900
University of Kentucky, $117,400
University of Georgia, $116,400
* - Salary figures exclude summer teaching, stipends and other non-contracted forms of remuneration. When instructors are compensated for 11 or 12 months’ work, their salaries are adjusted to a nine-month academic-year basis. Salary figures are rounded to the nearest $100.
Source: American Association of University Professors, Compensation Survey Data, 2014-2015 academic year
Faculty in the state’s university system want more of a say in financial and salary decisions, and they want system leaders to close the pay gaps between Georgia college faculty and national and regional competitors.
The requests are part of a resolution the Faculty Council of the University System of Georgia sent this week to system Chancellor Hank Huckaby and the state's Board of Regents.
The faculty group, which includes a voting member from each of the 30 schools in the system, also asks that the Regents suspend any further systemwide increases in tuition and fees pending financial reviews of faculty pay.
The resolution is all about shared governance, said Juone Brown, chairwoman of the USG’s Faculty Council, and underlines an ongoing issue with the group, which has previously petitioned the Regents for better faculty pay and governance.
This latest resolution comes as classes at the state's public colleges and universities are set to resume for the fall semester. It also follows pay hikes for presidents and Huckaby, approved by the Regents in May, a month after the Board also approved tuition hikes for all 30 system institutions.
The pay increases pushed the total compensation for presidents at Georgia State and Georgia Tech to above $1 million, a move Huckaby defended as a way to retain the top talent.
“We don’t want people to think that we’re a bunch of faculty members that are just angry because some people got a raise,” Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “As state taxpayers we are tired of the double-talk. We have individuals who say they want to create a more educated Georgia, but the salaries that have increased are not in the classroom.”
System leaders, including Huckaby and University of Georgia President Jere Morehead have expressed alarm that years of state budget cuts amid a down economy led to lower pay for Georgia college faculty and staff. They say that has made it hard to keep pace with salaries at other flagship institutions.
“We have received a resolution from the USG Faculty Advisory Council and appreciate the council sharing their views with us on faculty salaries,” said a statement from the System. “Indeed, we have been working to address faculty salaries, and for the last two fiscal years we have made faculty salary increases the number one priority in our budget process. We appreciate the faculty’s contributions to our institutions and look forward to our dialogue with them.”
The presidents’ raises and tuition hikes have rankled some faculty members who have been more vocal in their criticism of the University System.
Gary Kline, a political science professor at Georgia Southwestern State University, has written his president, Huckaby and the Regents about faculty pay. Over the past 10 years, he estimates system faculty have lost between 20 percent and 25 percent of their purchasing power because of the many years of no, or very low, pay raises that haven’t kept pace with the cost of living.
Kline has been the faculty council representative for his school, and he provided recommendations to the council on the latest resolution.
“I would have worded it more strongly and requested more of a commitment to address the faculty pay disparity,” he said. With Huckaby’s argument that the presidential pay increases were needed to retain the top talent, “why isn’t that sort of argument being used with faculty members? We are constantly losing faculty and we can’t recruit the best people anymore.”
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