Advocate Online - Special Issue 2006

Faculty Pay Doldrums

Faculty salaries decreased by 1 percent in 2004–05, the second straight year that increases did not keep pace with inflation. This is a reversal of the previous 10-year trend of steady growth in faculty salaries. The average faculty member’s purchasing power dropped $642, from $64,821 in 2003–04 to $64,179 in 2004–05. Chart 1 shows the leveling off of faculty salaries in constant dollars from 1990–91 to 2004–05.

In this issue of the Advocate...
...we once again provide data on a number of important areas in higher education employment, including a listing of faculty salaries in the nation’s public colleges and universities.

The data here are based on information found in the NEA 2006 Almanac of Higher Education. In addition to more detailed salary information, this year’s Almanac includes an in-depth look at the internationalization of higher education, an update on the status of the nation’s 1.5 million higher education support professionals, and an examination of trends in financing public higher education.

You’ll also find articles on bargaining by and for contingent faculty, faculty workload issues in an era of privatization and assessment, and a sobering accounting of a growing number of attacks on the right to organize and bargain in the academy.

Copies of the NEA 2006 Almanac are free to NEA members; contact the NEA Office of Higher Education, HigherEd@nea.org, or download PDFs containing all the articles at www.nea.org/he.

This special issue (6.8 mb) and a list of public-sector faculty salaries (585 k) are also provided in Acrobat pdf format.

Chart 1. Average full-time faculty salaries in constant dollars by academic rank, 1990-2005