BY THE AAUP RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

This is the first in a series of three blog posts on findings from the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession.

New data from an AAUP survey detail the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty salaries and fringe benefits for both tenure-line and non-tenure-track faculty members.

Key findings include:

• 55 percent of institutions implemented salary freezes or reductions.
• 28 percent of institutions eliminated or reduced some form of fringe benefits.
• Almost 5 percent of institutions terminated the appointments of at least some full-time tenure-line faculty members.
• Almost 20 percent terminated the appointments of or denied contract renewal to at least some full-time non-tenure-track faculty members.

The survey was a follow up to the AAUP’s Faculty Compensation Survey and the findings are included in the Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2020–21.

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Want more data for bargaining, campaigns or advocacy work? The AAUP Research Department has released the final dataset for the 2020–21 Faculty Compensation Survey, including salary and benefits data on nearly 380,000 full-time faculty members across 932 institutions and data on more than 100,000 part-time faculty members who were employed in the prior academic year, 2019–20. Complete updated appendices to the report are available on our website and include compensation data for all 932 participating institutions. Survey results may also be explored using the new interactive Faculty Compensation Survey Results Tool, which includes data on faculty salary, gender equity, tenure, fringe benefits, and part-time pay.

In the next two weeks we’ll be sharing more in-depth findings on contingency, administrative bloat, and institutional debt. Stay tuned.

The AAUP Research Department

Read the second post in the series here and the third post here.