This article presents the annual report on the economic status of the profession. This year's report covers three main issues--all perennial problems, but with new analysis based on the latest data--in addition to summarizing the current results from the annual American Association of University Professors (AAUP) survey of full-time faculty…

In four decades of teaching college English, the author has watched many good teaching jobs morph into second-class ones. Worse, she has seen the memory and then the expectation of teaching jobs with decent status, security, and salary depart along with principles and collegiality. To help reverse this downward spiral, she contends that what is…

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. With a duration of eighteen months, this recession was almost double the length of the average post-World War II economic downturn. Although the worst recession since the Great Depression is now technically over, this analysis…

Do liberal arts colleges act like research universities when they seek to appoint new faculty members? Evidence shows that research universities bid aggressively for talent, using discretionary salary policies to achieve a diverse professoriate, appoint research stars, and fill vacancies in fields where market forces require differential salaries.…

In this article, the authors argue that huge administrative salaries are bad for morale and for higher education's image. They discuss the results of their study on the current salary of all members of their university. The authors found out that in the past two years, the salaries of professors had flat lined, not always keeping up with…

In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

Reviews some of the continuing challenges for the higher education community in achieving salary equity between men and women by examining recent legal cases. Suggests issues that faculty members and administrators might consider when undertaking salary-equity studies. (EV)

Having recently represented their colleagues in discussions with the administration of their institution, Saint Anselm College, about faculty compensation, the authors of this paper decided to compile a guide for other professors at similar institutions--small, private liberal arts colleges--who may be called on to negotiate salary packages…

The applicability of the principle of comparable pay for comparable worth is discussed for college faculty jobs, not only for alleviation of sex discrimination but also for eliminating bias-related discrepancies between departments or specialties. (MSE)

This article discusses how one small liberal arts school, Wheaton College in Massachusetts, devised a strategic plan to improve faculty salaries by linking improvements in salaries to improvements in college resources. The benefits of the salary plan went beyond improving salaries. First, the plan dictated that faculty salaries be determined at…

The ambiguity concerning the status and role of the academic librarian and its reflection in the salary disparity between librarians and teaching faculty, and the differences of opinion concerning the solution, are discussed. (MSE)

Argues that, although the high salaries of faculty "superstars" may disadvantage other faculty and staff, particularly in a period of downsizing, the more serious problem is the tradition of large discipline-based differences in faculty salaries which undermine the principles of merit-based compensation. Resentment of "superstar" salaries may have…

In this paper, the author describes what might happen if a college got rid of its board of trustees and the faculty became voting partners in running the "corporation." What if there was no board of trustees composed mainly of outsiders? What if the president was chosen by and responsible to the faculty? What, in short, if the faculty owned the…

Disciplinary and rank salary differences in higher education are immense and growing, and neither a marketplace nor a uniform approach explains or guides the setting of academic salaries. Salary differences must be prevented from generating feelings of second-class citizenship to maintain a common purpose among faculty. (MSE)

The difficulty for an institution of finding a balance between traditional faculty compensation practices and free labor market practices that raise the salaries of faculty in high-demand disciplines in government, industry, and education is discussed. (MSE)