BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY

Faculty salaries barely budged when adjusted for inflation during the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the AAUP’s 2018-19 Faculty Compensation Survey. Average salaries for full-time faculty members at US colleges and universities are 2 percent higher in 2018-19 than they were in the preceding academic year, but with prices in the economy as a whole growing by 1.9 percent during the year, this is the third successive year that increases in average full-time faculty salaries have hardly outpaced inflation.

The AAUP collected data from more than 950 colleges and universities across the US for the survey, including community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and major research universities. The 2018-19 data cover more than 380,000 full-time faculty members, and also include salaries for senior administrators and pay for part-time faculty members.

To access data from the faculty compensation survey, go here.

Here are some highlights of this year’s data:

• Salaries for women full-time faculty members continue to lag behind those paid to men. On average, women were paid 81.6 percent of the salaries of men during academic year 2018-19. The differences are attributable primarily to an unequal distribution of employment between men and women in terms of institution type and faculty rank. The AAUP will be exploring these differences in greater detail in a report to be released in May.
• Full-time faculty salaries vary by the type of institution as well as by faculty rank. For example, the average salary for a full professor at a private-independent doctoral university is nearly $196,000, while an assistant professor at a religiously affiliated baccalaureate college is paid about $61,000, on average. [Survey Report Table 1]
• The increase in overall average full-time salary was slightly higher at private colleges and universities (2.2 percent) than public institutions (1.8 percent).
• Across all responding institutions, the average pay for a part-time faculty member teaching a three-credit course was $3,894—but the pay rates spanned a huge range. The lowest average rates of pay were reported by religiously affiliated private baccalaureate colleges, at $2,925, while private religiously affiliated doctoral universities paid the highest rates, $5,858 on average.
• Salaries for college and university presidents continue to outpace those for faculty, with presidents paid three to four times the salary of even the most senior faculty members at their institutions, on average [Survey Report Table 11]. The median salary for a college president in 2018-19 ranged from just over $200,000 at public community colleges to nearly $700,000 at private-independent doctoral universities.

Since 2015-16, the annual AAUP compensation report has included data on part-time faculty pay. This year’s survey represents a new approach to collecting and publishing those data, by focusing on pay rates for part-time faculty members teaching a standard course section. More than 330 colleges and universities provided data on part-time faculty pay in the 2017-18 academic year for this year’s survey, making it the largest source for these data. The part-time pay data are summarized in one table (Survey Report Table 14) and in an institution-specific Appendix III—new this year—that lists minimum, maximum, and average pay rates per course section. Collecting part-time faculty pay data is challenging, and the data released today undoubtedly include some errors, despite a rigorous validation process as part of the survey.  The publication of the new Appendix III represents an important step forward in revealing the substandard pay and working conditions for these faculty colleagues.

Want to share news of the survey? Share this graphic on social media.