Although a handful of University faculty members received slight salary increases, the vast majority of faculty and University staff salaries remain frozen because of the current economic downturn, according to released 2008-09 salary figures.
Faculty or University staff?
The distinction between faculty and University staff does not distinguish salaries, but roles within the University, explained Susan Carkeek, vice president and chief human resource officer. Faculty members are primarily engaged in teaching and research, whereas University staff fill support roles, she said. These support roles include executive, vice presidential, professional staff and entry-level staff positions, like those in administrative assistance and housekeeping.
The “University staff” designation has been in place since January, when the commonwealth legislature approved a higher education restructuring act that, among other things, gave the University authority to grant merit-based salary increases for University staff as it had been able to with faculty members for years, Carkeek explained. Nearly one-third of the University’s workforce is University staff and that ratio increases each year, Carkeek said.
Where salary money comes from
The University receives funding for its salaries — in roughly descending order — from tuition, patient revenues, state appropriations, endowment earnings and gifts, earned revenue from research, distributions from deans’ reserve accounts and other minor sources, University President John T. Casteen, III stated in an e-mail. This distribution applies to most schools, except the Darden School, the Law School and the Medical School.
“We made our decisions [on salaries] before the [Virginia] General Assembly convened in January, but one should note also that the GA has frequently frozen all salaries,” Casteen stated.
For the 2008 fiscal year, the expenses for all University salaries constituted 63.9 percent of the academic division’s total expenses of $1,187,159, according to an e-mail from Yoke San Reynolds, vice president and chief financial officer.
Where the money goes
The least endowed school in terms of faculty and staff salaries probably is the College, while the “best” endowed probably either is the Darden School or the Law School, Casteen stated.
“In the first year of a downturn, while waiting for better information on how deep it will be and how long it will last, we generally do what we can to maintain equity among the various school faculties,” Casteen stated.
Part of the problem of reducing University spending is that the University has large amounts of committed costs, Economics Department Chair William Johnson said.
“A huge fraction of University spending is in some sense not discretionary, as long as they’re not going to lay off faculty and staff,” Johnson said.
When to raise
English Department Chair Jahan Ramazani said the faculty understands the financial situation but noted that frozen salaries make it difficult to maintain normal operations.
“It’s difficult when you’re [the] chair of a department and it’s one of the very best departments in the country and you want to reward faculty for the excellence of their research and teaching,” Ramazani said. “Obviously, if you believe in a meritocratic reward system, it makes it very difficult for chairs who want to reward faculty excellence and productivity.”
When salaries are not frozen, department chairs recommend raises to the dean of the school, who makes recommendations to the provost. Very often, however, the dean and provost hold back some of the raise allocation in case other schools and departments wish to recruit faculty, Ramazani said.
Raises primarily are given to faculty members who the University strongly wishes to retain, who are underpaid compared to their peers or who move to a higher position at the University, Provost Arthur Garson said.
In addition, all schools and universities use national benchmarks to help determine faculty salaries, Garson said. These benchmarks — which are derived from national surveys — indicate the standard salary ranges around the United States for similar levels of experience, Medical School Dean Steve DeKosky said.
Of the University’s more than 2,200 teaching and research faculty, 286 employees received salary increases in 2008-09, according to statistics received from the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost. Seventy-four of these raises occurred in the Law School, which provided merit-based increases to its faculty, and the remaining raises were given by the other schools based on promotion, additional responsibilities or retention or equity concerns.
The Law School increased most teaching faculty salaries this past December to compete with other schools’, Law School Dean Paul Mahoney said.
“We face very strong competition from peer law schools, most of which pay their faculty more than we do,” Mahoney said. ”Because the Law School is as highly ranked and successful as it is, most of the law schools with which we compete are private.”
In many cases, these private institutions have more financial resources than the University does, Mahoney said. The private schools charge higher tuition and have been fundraising for a much longer time than the University Law School, Mahoney said. Most of the Law School’s money, meanwhile, was raised in the past 20 years, during which the school grew substantially, Mahoney said.
“In general, public universities have had difficulty keeping up with the salary scale at many of the best private universities,” Ramazani said. This disadvantage exists in part because state funds have decreased considerably during the last 20 years or so, Ramazani said.
Although the Law School does not receive any direct state support and is relatively young compared to its rival institutions, it still receives a large number of alumni donations, Mahoney said.
“A larger percentage of our graduates donate to us than any is true of any other law school in the nation,” Mahoney said. For example, 52 percent of the Law School’s alumni donated to the school last year, Mahoney said.
Private donations and tuition fund the faculty salaries, and the school plans to increase next year’s tuition by 5 percent, Mahoney said. Although the school has been more careful when determining salary increases, the raises still must continue at a lesser rate, Mahoney said.
At the Medical School, meanwhile, a small amount of money from the state pays a portion of teaching activities. Beyond this sum, most of the school’s funding for faculty salaries comes from a wide variety of sources, DeKosky said. These sources include research grants, National Institute of Health grants and clinical services that pay physicians’ salaries, DeKosky said.
To help determine the appropriate salary amounts, the Medical School uses benchmarks derived from national surveys. The Medical School tries to stay at the appropriate percentiles for given levels of faculty experience, DeKosky said, adding that the school generally starts salaries at about the 50th percentile.
The effect on faculty
Darden Professor Alan Beckenstein said he thinks the salary freezes are understandable, given the current fiscal condition of the University. Although every faculty member might prefer to get a raise, the freeze is “something we have to live with,” Beckenstein said.
Some professors, however, still consider salaries a minor issue, especially in the context of other University expenditures.
“No one likes freezes, but the state is broke,” History Prof. Joseph Kett said. “I get annoyed when I see lavish amounts of money being spent on sports palaces; that annoys me more than the freezes.”
Assoc. Engineering Prof. Teresa Culver said the hiring freeze is probably a greater hardship for her department than a short-term salary freeze because her office must function with fewer people, even as the number of University students continues to increase.
Bigger than the University?
Anthropology Prof. Frederick Damon said he thinks the salary freezes are not a major issue in the context of a global financial crisis.
“Anybody who thinks otherwise has got his or her head in the sand,” Damon said. Because of the recession, faculty members may have to make do with less, he added.
In a national context, there are other universities at which salary freezes are in effect, Ramazani said. Some schools, moreover, have had salary cuts and furloughs — forced vacations during which faculty keep working but are paid less, Ramazani said. The University thus far has managed to avoid such situations.
Although it is hard to generalize for the University’s employees, Ramazani said, one may assume that most faculty members understand the situation.
“I think people are frustrated when their excellence isn’t rewarded; at the same time, they’re aware of the state of the economy,” Ramazani said.
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