Newspapers / Brevard College Student Newspaper / May 1, 2009, edition 1 / Page 4
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Page 4 Letter to the editor: Opinion The Clarion | May 1, 2009 Clarifying the faculty salary issue I read with interest the front page article about faculty raises not being included in the new budget. Thank you for your interest in this topic but your article does not accurately describe the current faculty salary situation. Having tracked faculty salaries at Brevard College for a number of years, I would like to share some addi tional information with your readers which can help them reach their own conclusion about the degree that BC faculty salaries lag in comparison to our peers. First, let me say that I understand that salary increases may not be feasible this year with the current economic conditions and enrollment numbers. However, that does not mean that salary in creases for faculty AND staff are not desperately needed. I would like to briefly summarize data that I think show, using a variety of comparison groups, that BC faculty salaries are significantly below our peers. Data for faculty can be found at http://chronicle.com/ stats/salary/salary.htm. Data for staff are not as readily avaflable, but suffice it to say our excellent persoimel are undercompensated, as weU. rU share with your readers a brief summary of the data compar ing BC faculty salaries with several peer groups. One comparison group is the Appalachian CoUege Association (ACA), a peer group of schools that we belong to as an academic cohort. Another comparison group consists of schools in our athletic conference (SAC), and the third a group of peer schools identified by the col lege in 2008. When comparing the salaries of our faculty by rank with the mean of the ACA schools for the year 2008-2009, our full profes sor and associate professor salaries made over $7,000 dollars a year less than the average of their peers. 15-16 of the other 20 schools had salaries above ours. At the Assistant Professor rank, BC professors made $3,7 00 less than their peers. Comparing our salaries with the salaries of other schools in the SAC con ference, full professors here average $7,600 less. Associate professors average over $9,000 less and assistant professors over $5,000 less than our peers. All schools in our athletic conference who reported data had salaries that are higher than those that BC faculty make. The data are very similar when one uses the peer schools identified by the college inFeb. 2008. The Board of Trustees and the Strategic Plan both identified compensation as an important way to recruit and retain quality staff Specific detafls regarding how this wiU be accomphshed need to be defined, especially considering the current freeze, the economic situation and the data below. Comparing BC faculty salaries to our peers pro vides useful data to see how competitive our salaries are and in what direction we are heading. If one looks at the data for 2007 and compares it with 2008, one wiU see that the salary gap has widened despite the increase the college provided for salaries. Full professors fell behind as a group by roughly $4 thousand more dollars per year than they were behind the previous year. Associate professors feU behind by an additional $1,500, approximately, and now lag our peers by around $8K. Assistant professors at BC, as a group, made salaries that were about $4-5K lower than our peers, but did narrow the gap slightly by $500-1,000 thousand doUars a year. In conclusion, I look at this data and conclude that we are not doing okay with regard to faculty (and staff) salaries. We are significantly lagging behind and seem to be getting further behind even in years where there are increases in the salary pool. In a survey done about a year ago, faculty members were asked to rate their degree of satisfaction with nine items, including salary. Salary satisfaction was rated lower than any other item, with an average rating of below two on a 5-point scale. Location was rated the highest, about 4.5. Brevard CoUege, in my opinion, is a won derful place to work and the setting is as close to perfect as I could hope to see. I began my teaching career 22 years ago, teaching at a small liberal arts college. At that time two decades ago I made shghtly less than I make now at BC. If I were still at that coUege, at the associate professor rank, I would now be making $31,000 more than I am making now at BC. Yes, I love my job and where I am, and yes, I came to BC by choice, but I am not alone in thinking that BC has a significant deficiency in employee salaries. —Mary Kay White, Associate Professor Socm^ed/? Wc Care 885-7885 or 1 -800-395-help WWW. breva rd womenscente rcom
Brevard College Student Newspaper
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May 1, 2009, edition 1
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