The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2005, Friday

Copyright 2005 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education

January 7, 2005, Friday

SECTION: SPECIAL REPORT; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 485 words

HEADLINE: Personnel: Pay Gap Widens Between Public and Private Universities

BYLINE: EUGENE MCCORMACK

BODY:
The modest salary growth experienced by academics in the past year will probably be mirrored this year, experts say.
Salaries earned by college and university faculty members grew by 2.1 percent, on average, during the 2003-4 academic year -- the smallest annual increase in more than three decades, according to an annual report by the American Association of University Professors.
Faring slightly better were administrators, whose pay increased 2.5 percent last year, according to a survey of administrative salaries sponsored by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.
In the current year, administrative salaries will grow by a similarly modest amount, predicts Kirk D. Beyer, an adviser for the human-resource association's salary survey.
Without the lure of financial incentives, it is likely that colleges and universities will once again face a challenge in hiring workers and in keeping and rewarding current employees.
The main factors limiting salary growth will continue to be soaring health-care expenses and tight budgets. Nationally, health-insurance premiums rose 11.2 percent in 2004 -- the fourth consecutive year of double-digit increases, according to a study of public and private companies by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Mr. Beyer predicts an increase of about 10 percent in the coming year. "If you have a 10-to-15-percent increase every year for five years, you've doubled the cost of that benefit," says Mr. Beyer, director of human resources at Gustavus Adolphus College.
Mr. Beyer and Ronald G. Ehrenberg, who wrote the AAUP report, say that salaries at public institutions have fared the worst. "The salaries of faculty in public colleges have declined precipitously compared to private faculty, and I expect that the decline will continue in the upcoming year," says Mr. Ehrenberg, who is a professor of industrial and labor relations and economics at Cornell University. "The publics don't have the resources to keep up."
The hard blows that salaries have taken in public higher education have forced at least one university system to appeal to its state government. The University of California, citing the rising cost of health benefits and an increasing lack of competitiveness in luring professors, has asked in its 2005-6 budget proposal for an extra $87-million to ease its growing personnel crisis.
Mr. Beyer and Mr. Ehrenberg agree that the improving stock market will enlarge institutions' endowments and increase academic pay. Mr. Ehrenberg, however, predicts that the rebound will most help the wealthiest private universities, creating an even greater divide between faculty salaries at those institutions and at poorer private and public universities.
"What is happening in higher education is mirroring what is happening in the rest of our society," he says. "We're just becoming more unequal."