Dear Colleagues:

We have published a salary survey every year since 1976, the only exceptions being those years without raises. For  two years running the UI administration has waited until mid-year to fund salary raises.  The UI budget office supplied us with a file that did not indicate raises, primarily because of promotions, that were funded in May, and equity raises that were granted to full professors in CLASS in August.  Therefore, the figure in the first column is taken from the mid-2005 tabulations available at www.webs.uidaho.edu/ipb/Budget_Office/budgetoffice.htm along faculty salaries going back to FY01.

From 619 Faculty to 448 in 8 Years: Doing Much More with Much Less

During the academic year 1997-98 there were 619 faculty in the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor. This year the number is 484, a reduction of 135 faculty.  This means that UI students, whose numbers are growing each year, are enrolling in much larger classes and also being taught by more TAs and lecturers. It is worth repeating a conclusion drawn last year by the UI Office of Institutional Research and Assessment: “The total salary outlay for these faculty, about $30 million dollars, has changed very little during this time period, as the increase in salaries has been almost exactly offset by reduction in numbers. It could be argued that the instructional faculty in these ranks are contributing more than $7.5 million in forgone salary to the state each year."  (our emphasis)

4 Percent Raise Taken Out of Existing Budgets; Governor’s 3 Percent for FY07 is an Insult

Contrary to rumors that the 4 percent mid-year raise was a match between 2 percent new money and 2 percent reallocation of existing funds, the full 4 percent was taken from our budgets.  Some colleges were able to handle this act of fiscal cannibalism better than others, but Ag Extension, WAMI, and WOI were severely strapped by this exercise.  These raises of course go into the base and must be funded next year as well.  While President White greeted the Governor’s offer of a 3 percent salary raise positively, this is far short of the 8 percent that Provost Baker announced, at a recent AFT meeting, as the administration’s goal for faculty raises for FY07.

Current Raises Does Little for UI Faculty vis-à-vis Other Faculty at Research II Institutions

Although full professors averaged a 6.27 percent increase, they gained only .2 percent on their peers and are still 23.7 percent behind faculty at Research II institutions.  Associate professors received mean raises of only 1.11 percent and they still lag by 18 percent.  Assistant professors received an average of 4.4 percent and they are 15.8 percent below their peers.  The figures in Table I are from the Oklahoma State University Salary Survey and the percentage lag for each rank is found in the far right column.

Promotion Increments Help Full Professors, but Associate salaries are still Compressed

One of the principal AFT salary recommendations over the years has been a plea for larger promotion increments, primarily to alleviate salary compression in the upper ranks.  They used to be $1,000 for promotion to associate and $1,500 to full.  We take some credit for the fact that the Hoover administration increased those increments to $5,000 and $6,500 respectively.  Recently they were boosted to $6,000 and $8,500, and finally we are seeing an appropriate gap between associate and full professor salaries. But associate pay is now far too compressed with reference to assistants and that must be addressed.

Administrative Raises Up 239% in 24 Years vs. Full Professors at 154%; Cost of Living was 193 Percent

In 1995 we thought that we had succeeded in curbing excessive increases in administrative raises, but as Tables I & II indicate below, they have outstripped full professors by 85 percent over 24 years. During the period 1990-1995 raises for the higher administration rose by 21.34 percent compared to 16.5 percent for faculty. When the AFT made these increases an issue in 1995, the next year administrator pay rose only 2.33 percent, about 3 percent lower than the faculty.  

In a recent meeting with the AFT, Provost Douglas Baker said that increased pay for administrators is caused by high turn over.  In the past our administrators stayed in their posts much longer, and our theory is that excessive administrative salaries are caused by applying a corporate model to higher education management.  United Airlines is just emerging from bankruptcy after dumping its pensions on the government and demanding wage reductions for its employees. Its management team, however, continues to get raises and bonuses.  Some of us discern some instructive and demoralizing parallels here.

Huge Differentials for Some Department Chairs; Will the Market Soon Rule Here, Too?

In the old days department chairs were given a fiscal year appointment and an administrative increment of $5,000. Multiplying the average 2005-06 full professor salary by 11/9 and adding $5,000 gives a $20,000 average difference between full professors and their chairs.  The following are differentials in selected departments: math ($65,033); electrical engineering ($50,890); English ($49,774); chemical engineering ($41,769); chemistry ($36,179); civil engineering ($35,876); biological sciences ($34,344), and mechanical engineering ($29, 219).

White’s $275,018 is a 382 percent increase over Gibb’s FY82 Salary; CPI at 195 for Same Period

In 1972 new assistant professors made about $10,000 and President Ernest Hartung made about $30,000. When President Richard Gibb hired in 1977, his salary had risen to four times that of entry level faculty. Faculty complaints became more vocal when Elizabeth Zinser’s FY 94 salary was $125,039, five times entry level salaries. Zinser promised that her "high tide" wage would float all faculty boats, but instead our boats have been swamped. UI President White declined to take a raise for mid-06, but he nonetheless received a 1.87 percent increase in May.  The differential with entry level faculty has now risen to seven times.

Substantial Salary Deficiencies for UI Faculty by Discipline

Those who justify these huge administrative salaries say: "This is what the market demands, and we are still paying less than peer institutions." If faculty salaries had been keeping up, this would have been persuasive. But, as the State Board of Education continues to approve these administrative increases each year, faculty salaries have fallen further and further behind. The result is a staggering failure to meet salary levels at peer institutions, especially full professors in the following disciplines:  marketing (-41.6%); philosophy (-39.9 %); teacher education (-35.5%); law (-34.5%); psychology (-34.4%); family and consumer science (-33.7); foreign languages (-33%); civil engineering (-32.8%); accounting (-32.1%); political science (-31.5%); sociology-anthropology (-31.4%); health & PE (-29.3%); ag economics (-28.9%); history (-28.4%); statistics (-28.4%); art & design (-26.1%); and physics (-25%).  For the complete list by discipline all ranks, by college all ranks, and average in each rank see http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/OKState.htm.

Across the Board Raises Before Merit Pay

The Hoover administration committed itself to "across the board increases" for "all employees showing at least satisfactory performance." This promise stands first in a list that includes promotions, merit pay, and equity adjustments. The AFT position has always been that as a long as salaries do not keep up with the cost of living, then merit pay is a moot point. When legislative raises are applied according to merit, many faculty end up with pays cuts because of the decline in general buying power.

Collective Bargaining is the Only Answer

During the late 1960s there was a large expansion of our public higher education system. This was good for educational opportunity, but bad in the way that this system developed according to a business model. University presidents became less like academic leaders and more like CEOs, and their salaries, as well as those of their management teams, have skyrocketed. A natural response to the industrialization of the university was the rise of faculty unions. They now represent a large majority of faculty in states where collective bargaining is allowed. Idaho, unfortunately, is not one of them.

A central feature of these contracts is a salary step system that guarantees cost of living increases as well as raises above that in good years. If UI faculty had gone for our salary step proposal in 1976 (see Table III), we would now be at the top of our peers rather than at the bottom. Furthermore, faculty without "market value"–those in the library, humanities, and social sciences--would be making a decent professional wage.

Dale Graden, President (history graden@uidaho.edu)      Nick Gier, Secretary (philosophy ngier@uidaho.edu)

Lynne Haagensen (art lynneh@uidaho.edu)                    Bob Dickow, Treasurer (music dickow@uidaho.edu)

Local 3215, American Federation of Teachers University of Idaho  

Visit our website at http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm

TABLE I  AVERAGE SALARY BY RANK  1995-2006
Compared to National Average of Research II Institution Salaries
154% Increase for Full Professors Over 24 Years versus 193% Cost-of-Living Increase
Source: Oklahoma State Faculty Salary Survey 2005-2006

TABLE II  ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES (from UI Budget Books)
239% Increase in Ten Positions Over 24 Years; first number is raise from FY05 to FY06  

TABLE III  A UI FACULTY SALARY STEP SYSTEM (UIS³)  

UIS³-7: Instructors and Lectures.  All part-time faculty would join the scale and their salaries would be prorated; UIS³-8: Senior Instructors.  Any faculty member who has served satisfactorily at UIS³-7 for ten years would be promoted to this rank and would be eligible for tenure; Senior Instructors who perform satisfactorily for ten year will then move to UIS³-9. UIS³-9: Assistant Professor; UIS³-10 &11: Associate Professor; UIS³-12&13: Full Professor; UIS³-14&15: Senior Professor.  New Rank based on superior teaching and research. Adapted from Seattle-Tacoma GS Salary Schedules at http://www.opm.gov/ oca/06tables indexGS.asp