Report to the Faculty Senate
on Faculty Salaries at the University of North Texas
2001 - 2002
Faculty Salary Study Committee
Margie Tieslau and Earl Zimmerman - Co-chairs
Alex Chrestopoulos
Brian Bowen
John Dempsey
John Kensinger
Kathryn Loafman
Laura Valerius
Linda Marshall
Michelle Walker
The Faculty Salary
Study Committee met on several occasions through the fall semester to address
the issues raised by the committee in the 1999 - 2000 report (no report was
made by the committee for 2000 - 2001).
Specific charges to the committee for 2001 - 2002 were not made, so the
committee developed its mission based on a variety of issues. The committee discussed at length the
potential outcome of annual salary studies and their use by the
administration. The committee directed
the co-chairs, Gay Woods (resigned from the committee in the fall semester and
replaced by Margie Tieslau) and Earl Zimmerman to meet with the Vice President
for Academic Affairs, David Kesterson, to discuss the administrative concerns
as they related to faculty salaries.
The co-chairs were informed that the administration developed its
position on faculty salaries based on two major points:
$ Because of continued discrepancies,
using the Oklahoma State University faculty salary survey was no longer
considered valid by the administration.
$ The administration considered
comparisons of UNT faculty salaries with those at Texas Tech University (TTU),
the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and the University of Houston (UH)
to be he most valid, reasoning that these institutions are most like us.
The committee considered these
points and decided that, if these were the comparisons that the administration
uses in making decisions on issues of salary at UNT, then the committee should
base most of its report on these such comparisons for its report for 2001 -
2002. These comparative data were
requested from the Planning Office in the fall semester through Mr. Anzaldua
and were obtained in April 2002.
A note about other concerns of
faculty relating to salary issues is warranted. First, the continuing issue of differences in faculty salaries
based on gender or other issues of diversity
was discussed by the committee, however, the committee chose not to
address this issue in the report this year.
It was noted that determination of any discrepancies in salary, not
necessarily those related to gender, could not be validated unless time-in-rank
was considered along with the history of annual merit evaluations. These data, especially the latter, are not
easily obtained, since they are maintained within departments or individual
colleges and are often privy only to the chair. A requirement to analyze such data was beyond the scope of this
committee and was deemed a department/college issue. The committee ceded that chairs in the College of Arts &
Sciences were charged to examine gender issues of salaries and to address these
in making variance recommendations in 2000 - 2001.
Second, comparisons of differences
in salaries between disciplines was not deemed to be valid. The committee noted that there were national
trends in ‘market value’ for specific disciplines that rendered any comparisons
between disciplines invalid.
Similarly, determining means for
all salaries at any rank were invalidated by differences if market value is not
considered.
With these factors providing a basis
for this year’s report, the committee was left with a comparison of UNT faculty
salaries with those at TTU, UTA, and UH.
The basis for this year’s report is not, however, a simple
comparison. Instead, the committee
chose a route that, as far as could be determined, had never been
undertaken. The analysis this year
included not just salaries but comparative costs of living in the Denton area
with those in Lubbock, Arlington, and Houston proper and its suburbs. Furthermore, salary is an issue of concern
for UNT’s ability to retain or recruit new faculty. The committee submitted a survey to all department chairs of the
university to ascertain their opinions on various issues relating to retention
and recruitment of faculty.
Methods of Analysis
Differences in cost of living were
calculated from a useful websites (www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html; www.BestPlaces.net/html/col1.asp;
www.cnnmoney.com) that allow a salary for a specific city to be
entered and compared to a comparable cost-of-living salary at another
location. For example, when a salary of
$50,000 for Denton was entered into the first website above, a comparable
standard of living salary for Lubbock was determined to be $43,571. Thus, to maintain the same standard of
living in Lubbock as one has in Denton, costs 13% less. For Houston, various suburbs, as well as
Houston proper, were entered, and a mean was calculated. Similarly, costs of living in surrounding
communities to Denton, Lewisville, Carrolton, Flower Mound, were also
calculated. Results of the comparisons
are shown below in Table 1 as averages from calculations based on the three
websites and were verified from personal contacts.
|
Table 1. Cost of Living Differences between Denton, Arlington, Houston, and Lubbock |
|
|
Arlington |
-0.03 |
|
Houston |
-0.07 |
|
Lubbock |
-0.12 |
|
AVE |
-0.07 |
On
the average, it costs 7% more to live in Denton or surrounding communities and
maintain the same standard of living as one would have in Arlington, the
Houston area, or Lubbock. This average
of 7% was then used to make calculations based on salaries at these
institutions. The comparisons were made
using the reasoning as follows. Let us
say that the average salary for a full professor at UNT in discipline X is
$70,000. The average for full
professors in this discipline at the three other institutions is $68,000. Therefore, a full professor in discipline X
at UNT make 3% ($2,000/$70000) more than those at TTU, UTA, and UH. However, it costs 7% more to maintain the
same standard of living in Denton than in the other three locations. Considering this, a salary of $68,000 at
TTU, UTA, and UH would require a salary of $72,760 at UNT based on cost of
living, and full professors at UNT have $2,760 less spending power than those
at the other three institutions. The
salary differences including cost of living calculations are represented in the
discussions of various faculty ranks as values of COLD - Cost of Living
Differences.
To
apply this measure of salary and cost of living, and thus determine values of COLD, the report comparing salaries at UNT with
those at TTU, UTA, and UH was compiled to represent various departments and
schools that delineate disciplines represented on the UNT campus. These included Communications (Departments
of Journalism and Communication Studies), Sciences (Departments of Biological
Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering Technology), Art
(School of Visual Art and Department of Dance and Theatre Arts), Humanities
(Departments of Foreign Languages and Literature, Department of English,
Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies), Social Sciences (Departments of Psychology, Criminal Justice,
Public Administration, Social Work, Anthropology, Economics, History, Political
Science, and Sociology), Education (College of Education including programs in
Parks, Recreation, Leisure, and Fitness Studies), Music (School of Music), and
Business (School of Business).
Comparative data were not available for librarians or the Departments of
Geography and Materials Science and the Schools of Hospitality Management and
Library and Information Sciences. Data
for the various discipline groupings and cost of living comparisons are
provided in Appendix I, Appendix II
presents the entire data set provided by the Public Information Office.
In Appendix I,
verification of calculations can be accomplished by multiplying the average
salaries for a given rank in a given discipline (column 1) by 1.07. This represents the cost of living salary
necessary to live in Denton (column 4). Subtracting the salary for a given rank in this same discipline at
UNT (column 2) from the salary in column 4 results in the positive or negative
value difference in salary in column 5.
A negative value in column 5 represents how much underpaid the faculty
at that rank are when compared to the cost of living in communities where the
other three institutions are located.
The rationale for combining departments into disciplines can be
questioned, however, one can easily calculate the cost of living salaries for
each department by manipulating the salaries as described above.
Analysis
of Salary Comparisons
Data
in Appendix I can be summarized as follows, given certain caveats. It should be noted that there are some
unusually discrepant salaries in certain cases. This is because some disciplines, most notably Dance and Theatre
Arts, have unusually high salaries at the rank of full professor at other
institutions. Inspection of the data
indicated that the average was skewed by data from UH. Since full statistics were not made
available, it was impossible to determine if this was from one or more outlier
salaries that were not representative of the discipline at UH.
Full Professors - Full professors at UNT are underpaid by
approximately $1,000 to $13,800 at UNT.
The disciplines at the lower level of COLD include education and the
Humanities, while high values of COLD range from -$9,345 in the Sciences to
-$13,885 in Business. The value in
Dance and Theatre Arts, -$21,132 is skewed heavily by UH. If UH is excluded, then the only institution
with full professors in this discipline is TTU where the average full professor
salary is $65,335. In order to make a
valid comparison of this average salary to that at UNT, one must multiply this
salary by 1.13, since the cost of living in Lubbock is 13% less than in
Denton. This results in a cost of
living salary for UNT of $73,829 and a value for COLD of -$7,959. Either way, full professors in this
discipline are grossly underpaid at UNT.
Associate Professors - Values of
COLD for associate professors at UNT are positive only in Art and Education,
with salaries of from approximately $1,300 to $1,600 higher based on cost of
living. Values of COLD for associate
professors are negative for all remaining disciplines, with a low of -$1,787 in
Dance and Theatre to a high of -$9,564 in Business. Of seven disciplines with negative values for associate
professors, four are Approximately -$3,500
or higher.
Assistant Professors - Values of
COLD for assistant professors are positive for Art, Dance and Theatre Arts,
Music, Education and the Humanities, $1,050, $8,475, $3,451, $185, and
$1,449,respectively. The remaining
values of COLD are all negative, ranging from -$2,440 in the Sciences to nearly
$7,000 in Communications and Buisiness.
New Assistant Professors - Salaries
for new assistant professors were available for eight discipline
groupings. It would appear that the
Humanities and Music are the only disciplines that offers competitive salaries
to new faculty, with positive values of COLD of $2,173 and $$5,054,
respectively. In the remaining
disciplines, the value of COLD is always negative, varying from -$1,006 in
Education to -$20,693 in Business. This
is most disturbing, as it represents our ability to remain competitive in
attracting the best faculty to UNT.
Interestingly, in four disciplines, Humanities, Business, and the
Sciences, new assistant professor salaries are higher than the averages for
assistant professors who have been at the university for an extended
period. It has been suggested that an
existing assistant professor might be better off to resign and reapply for the
vacancy in hopes of attracting a better salary.
Instructor - Comparative
data were insufficient for a valid comparison.
Lecturer - No data for
any of the universities were provided.
With expanding enrollments, the university hires more faculty in these
temporary positions who have a major commitment to our instruction, and it
becomes increasingly important that the UNT pay some attention to salaries of
lecturers.
Summary of Salary Comparisons
The
rationale for comparing salaries based not only on averages at our competing
schools in Texas, but also by cost of living differences, is valid, especially
since the cost of living in the DFW metroplex is higher than in other major
municipalities in the state, with the exception of Austin (5% higher). Of the three tenure/tenure track ranks, both
associate and full professors remain as the most underpaid faculty at the
university and in nearly all disciplines.
However, assistant professors are not far behind in their negative
cost-of-living-based salaries. Among
the most alarming negative values are those for new assistant professors,
indicating that UNT’s salaries are not competitive.
Recommendations
$ The university must stand by the
initiatives detailed in its strategic plan to make a concerted effort to
increase faculty salaries in the next two to four years.
$ The university must pay special
attention to salaries at all ranks, but especially those for full professors
where the greatest cost-of-living deficit exists.
$ The university must increase starting
salaries for new faculty in order to remain competitive with comparable
state-supported institutions in Texas.
$ The Vice President for Academic
Affairs should take the initiative to instruct deans of all colleges and
schools to examine in detail salary equity issues, especially as they relate to
gender and ethnic origin. This must
take place at the department level with considerations of merit history and
time in rank.
SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS OF THE
CHAIRS'
SURVEY OF FACULTY SALARY ISSUES
Introduction
The
"Chairs' Survey" was designed by current members of the Faculty
Salary Study Committee (see appendix for a list of members' names). The purpose of the survey was to gather
information on the state of salary matters in each department and to solicit
feedback from chairs and department heads on their concerns regarding salary
issues. The survey contained three
parts: (1.) one section with ten
multiple-choice questions; (2.) one section containing eleven statements about
which respondents were asked to rate their feelings from "strongly
disagree" to "strongly agree;" and, (3.) one section in which respondents
could write any additional comments and/or concerns they had about salary
issues. A copy of the original survey
appears in the appendix of this document.
The survey was sent by e-mail to all chairs and department heads. For all questions, respondents were asked to
answer according to the situation in their own department only. Recipients could submit their responses
electronically by return e-mail, or on paper via campus mail. The committee received fourteen responses to
the survey.
II. Summary of Part 1:
1. With regard to recruiting and hiring new
junior-level faculty or librarians:
C 9 out of 14 indicated salaries were
generally competitive enough to allow them to fill positions with acceptable
candidates most of the time.
C 4 out of 14 indicated salaries were
generally NOT competitive enough to allow them to fill positions most of the
time.
C 1 indicated salaries were generally
competitive enough to allow them to fill positions with strong candidates most
of the time.
2. With regard to recruiting and hiring new
senior-level faculty or librarians:
C 7 out of 14 indicated salaries were
generally NOT competitive enough to allow them to fill positions most of the
time.
C 4 out of 14 indicated salaries were
generally competitive enough to allow them to fill positions with acceptable
candidates most of the time.
C 3 responded "not applicable" or
"don't know."
3. With regard to retaining existing
junior-level faculty or librarians:
C 6 of out 14 indicated salaries were NOT
competitive enough to discourage most people from seeking alternative offers.
C 4 out of 14 indicated salaries were
competitive enough to discourage only the highest paid individuals from seeking
alternative offers.
C 2 of 14 indicated salaries department
generally were competitive enough to discourage most people from seeking
alternative offers.
C 2 responded "not
applicable" or "don't know."
4. With regard to retaining existing
senior-level faculty or librarians:
C 6 out of 14 indicated salaries were
competitive enough to discourage only the highest paid individuals from seeking
alternative offers.
C 5 out of 14 indicated salaries were NOT
competitive enough to discourage most people from seeking alternative offers.
C 2 out of 14 indicated salaries department
generally were competitive enough to discourage most people from seeking
alternative offers.
C 1 responded "not applicable" or
"don't know."
5. When asked how much of a problem salary
compression is:
C 12 out of 14 indicated this was a
significant problem.
C 2 out of 14 indicated this was a moderate
problem.
6. When asked how salaries in their own
department compared with similar departments at Carnegie I institutions:
C 8 out of 14 indicated their salaries were
significantly lower.
C 4 out of 14 indicated their salaries were a
little lower.
C 1 indicated their salaries were about the
same.
C 1 responded "not applicable" or
"don't know."
7. With regard to teaching:
C 8 out of 14 indicated their faculty
generally put in more time than faculty at comparable institutions.
C 6 out of 14 indicated their faculty
generally put in about the same amount of time as faculty at comparable
institutions.
8. With regard to research:
C 10 out of 14 indicated their faculty
generally put in about the same amount of time as faculty at comparable
institutions.
C 2 out of 14 indicated their faculty
generally put in more time than faculty at comparable institutions.
C 1 indicated their faculty generally put in
less time than faculty at comparable institutions.
9. With regard to salary inequities based on
gender:
C 9 out of 14 indicated that this was not much
of a problem in their department.
C 3 out of 14 indicated that this was a
moderate problem in their department.
C 1 indicated that this was a significant
problem in their department.
C 1 responded "not applicable" or
"don't know."
10. With regard to salary inequities based on
minority status:
C 9 out of 14 indicated that this was
not much of a problem in their department.
C 2 out of 14 indicated that this was a
moderate problem in their department.
C 3 responded "not
applicable" or "don't know."
We offer the
following summary of the major concerns brought out by the responses in Part 1:
1. An overwhelming majority of respondents feel
that salaries are not competitive enough to allow them to hire new senior-level
faculty.
2. An overwhelming majority of respondents feel
that salaries in their department were significantly lower than salaries in
comparable departments at Carnegie I institutions, even though they feel that
faculty at UNT spend significantly more time teaching and just as much time engaging in research as comparable
faculty at Carnegie I institutions.
3. An overwhelming majority of respondents feel
that salary compression is a huge problem at UNT.
4. A majority of respondents feel that salaries
are not competitive enough to retain both junior-level and senior-level
faculty.
5. A majority of respondents feel that salary
inequities based on gender or minority status are not much of a problem in
their departments.
III. Summary of Part 2:
Respondents
were asked to rate their feelings according to the following scale:
1 = strongly
agree;
2 = moderately
agree;
3 = neutral;
4 = moderately
disagree;
5 = strongly
disagree;
X = not
applicable or don't know.
|
Question: |
Average Score:e |
|
When
budgetary decisions regarding salary issues are made at the administrative
level, I am usually made aware of the criteria used to make these decisions. |
3.18 |
|
When
budgetary decisions regarding salary issues are made at the administrative
level, I usually feel that these decisions are reasonable and equitable. |
2.89 |
|
I feel that
there is a good line of communication between administrators and departments
on budgetary decisions regarding salary issues. |
3.07 |
|
My opinion
on budgetary decisions regarding salary issues is regularly solicited by the
administration. |
3.39 |
|
I feel that
my input on budgetary decisions regarding salary issues is taken seriously
and highly valued by the administration. (based on 13
responses) |
3.12 |
|
I feel that
the administration is aware of salary inequities in my department and is
doing everything it can to rectify this situation. |
3.86 |
|
I feel that
salaries for new hires at the junior
level in my department are generally competitive with the market. (based
on 13 responses) |
3.42 |
|
I feel that
salaries for new hires at the junior
level in my department are generally competitive with the market. |
3.29 |
|
I feel that
salaries for new hires at the senior
level in my department are generally competitive with the market. (based
on 11 responses) |
4.09 |
|
Money
allocated for merit raises is generally adequate to meet the needs of my
department. |
4.50 |
|
Money
allocated for variance purposes is generally adequate to meet the needs of my
department. (based on 13 responses) |
4.31 |
Based on 14
responses, unless otherwise indicated.