Many of the gender and racial wage gaps found in society are also seen within higher education, with less diversity among college administrators, faculty, and staff than the United States population as a whole. Postsecondary institutions alone cannot correct the systemic inequities that limit socioeconomic mobility and racial justice, but they can…

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) represents 72,000 academic staff at universities and colleges across the country. CAUT strives for fair working conditions, compensation and benefits to foster quality teaching and innovative research while advancing equity and human rights within our profession. Many of the institutions where…

This paper presents the annual report of the American Association of University Professors on the economic status of the profession for 2010-2011. This analysis of the economic status of the faculty begins with results from this year's annual survey of full-time faculty compensation. Survey report table 1 presents the most basic results, while…

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…

Budget pressures, tightening labor markets, and increasing public interest should prompt colleges and universities to review their wage and salary programs. Many administrators have never been exposed to practices other than those common to higher education, and trustees with corporate experience may provide some insight. (Author/MSE)

In sciences, postdoctoral fellowships have become the terminal academic credential for a research career. Positions are supposed to be temporary, but amount to a holding pattern for many unable to find permanent jobs in research or needing to assemble the required publishing record. Some institutions are beginning to acknowledge this problem and…

Methods and variables used to analyze Idaho State University faculty salaries are described, and results of salary analyses are presented. Practical issues confronting the salary study committee, procedures used to resolve them, and limitations of regression analysis are also examined. (MSE)

In a university salary prediction study of 75 faculty members, years of service acted as a negative suppressor variable. The suppressor effect was interpreted as salary compression, or the failure of the organization to recognize seniority with adequate compensation increases while meeting market values for new hires. (SLD)

Comparable worth and pay equity issues are considered, along with implications for college institutional researchers. Comparable worth is generally defined as a policy of paying equal pay for work of comparable value. After discussing the issues and tracing relevant legislation, attention is directed to ways that the institutional research office…

Faculty promotion and salary policies at the University of Texas at Austin are analyzed to determine whether male and female faculty members are rewarded equally for equal academic qualifications and performances. This regression analysis tends to support the discrimination hypothesis with respect to both promotion and salary policies. (Author/LBH)

Simple comparisons of average salaries for junior and senior faculty can not indicate whether the differential is declining, because there is no standard for comparison. A simple five-step regression analysis procedure is proposed to investigate salary compression. Analysis of 1990-91 faculty salary data for the University of Minnesota indicates…

Eastern Washington University (EWU) designed a plan to resist faculty salary compression. Salary compression occurs when cost of living increases fail to keep pace with salaries in the external market thus, when new faculty are hired at or near market rates, they will often have salaries higher than senior faculty with equivalent academic…

Issues of early retirement of college and university faculty are examined as they relate to Australia's aging faculty population, and the conditions necessary to promote early retirement successfully in this context are considered. (MSE)

This study at Miami University (Ohio) compared multiple regression techniques, traditionally used in higher education to examine salary inequities, with compa-ratio analysis. This new technique has been a corporate practice for reviewing salary and gender bias and is now being applied in studies of higher education salary equity. Weaknesses of the…

A university's use of the Automatic Interaction Detector (AID) to monitor faculty salary data is described. The first step consists of examining a tree diagram and summary table produced by AID. The tree is used to identify the characteristics of faculty at different salary levels. The table is used to determine the explanatory power of the…