Public faculty paid less than private, report says

MU faculty salaries are expected to barely keep up with inflation.

By John Henry

Published April 18, 2008

A new report shows the gap between the pay rate for faculty at public and private universities is widening.

The report, released by the American Association of University Professors, showed a full professor at a public doctoral university makes only an average of 76 percent of what his or her counterpart might earn at a comparable private university, compared to 91 percent in 1970.

AAUP Research and Public Policy Director John Curtis said the findings in the report bring more attention to how education should be a higher priority in society.

“We have been trying to call attention to the fact there is a real need to reinvest in higher education and to make it a public good, something that is more of a priority when it comes to decisions of how to invest public funds,” Curtis said.

MU is one of 34 public institutions in the Association of American Universities. The AAU, a conglomeration of the leading research universities in the U.S. and Canada, ranked MU second-to-last in the amount it pays its faculty.

MU Faculty Council Chairman Frank Schmidt said political factions in the state of Missouri are to blame for funding discrepancies being passed on to the university. He said the state’s poor educational funding would hurt future generations who learn in its schools.

“A political establishment in Missouri has made the judgment that they rather put their money somewhere else,” Schmidt said. “It is unfortunate because they are not the ones who are going to pay for it. The ones who are going to pay for it are the kids in the future generations who are not going to be educated to the extent they ought to be.”

In 2007, MU unveiled Compete Missouri, a financial plan targeted toward raising faculty salaries at the university to compete with salaries being given at other public and private institutions. The plan called for a hold on all new hires made within the university to help cut budget expenses.

Next year, Schmidt said he expects Compete Missouri will result in a modest increase of faculty salary that will be over the inflation rate.

According to the report, the average national salary for full-time university faculty members rose 3.8 percent this year. Inflation rose at a rate of 4.1 percent.

Schmidt said Compete Missouri helps, but not to the extent needed to drastically improve the salary of faculty members on campus.

“It (Compete Missouri) is a small finger in the dike,” Schmidt said. “If you look at the pay for productive faculty on campus, people who have won teaching awards or people who have extensive international reputations, it is way low.”

MU Provost Brian Foster agreed state funding plays a major role in the university’s ability to provide its faculty with good salaries.

But he said one of the problems apparent at MU is not retaining quality faculty but instead recruiting it.

“For those (faculty) that are here, they have various reasons to stay that help us retain them,” Foster said. “They have got their kids in school, their spouse maybe has a job, and they may like Columbia. There are all those wonderful things. For someone elsewhere who we are trying to recruit, none of that applies.”