April 22, 2005 UNT Inhouse publication: Work is under way to secure funds for 2005-06 faculty salary market adjustments

homepage

Work is under way to secure funds for 2005-06 faculty salary market adjustments

After implementing faculty market adjustments this fiscal year, Howard Johnson, provost and vice president for academic affairs, is working to secure money for fiscal year 2006 to make further adjustments to improve faculty salaries.

The purpose of the adjustments is to recognize, reward and retain productive core faculty members, Johnson says.

"My goal is to continue the adjustments this next year and the following year," he says. "That is not to say our faculty will be where they should be because other institutions are doing this same thing, but it does bring us closer to having competitive faculty salaries."

Plans for the adjustments began after a benchmark study found that the salaries paid to UNT faculty as a group were about $4 million behind the average market salaries. To address this, officials developed a multi-year plan to boost faculty member salaries to make them more competitive.

This fiscal year, Johnson secured more than $1.4 million to begin the salary adjustments.

He says that adjustments were made to the salaries of 249 of the 743 tenure or tenure-track faculty members (34 percent), ranging from $500 to $29,650. He also says that 13 of 48 librarians (27 percent) received adjustments. The salary increases were included in March paychecks and were retroactive to Sept. 1. The adjustments do not replace merit raises, which could be earned by some of the same faculty members.

"We have a hard-working faculty, and they deserve to have competitive salaries," Johnson says. "This also reduces our vulnerability of losing outstanding faculty members to other institutions, and it is just the right thing to do."

Funding for fiscal year 2006 won't be approved until later this year.

To learn more, visit www.unt.edu/facsenate/faculty_market_adjustments.ppt.