Don't blame faculty for high tuition: The annual report on the economic status of the profession, 2003-04

Academe

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2004, Pages

  Ehrenberg, Ronald G ^a  

^a Department of Obstetrics Gynecology   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 2442463275     PISSN: 01902946     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/40252611     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (23)

1. Michael Arnone, "State Spending on Colleges Drops for the First Time in Eleven Years," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2004. The data upon which this story is based are collected annually by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University and are published electronically on the center's Web site (http://www.coe.ilsu.edu/grapevine).
2. Sara Hebel, "State Appropriations: Still Scarce, But Better Budgets May Be Near," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 19, 2003. The percentage cited in the text is based on nominal, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars.
3. Trends in College Pricing 2003 (New York: College Board Publications, 2003), table 5a.
4. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey," available at http://www.bls.gov.
5. John L. Pulley, "Endowments Post First Gain in Three Years But Some Still Lag," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2004.
6. Robin Wilson, "Stanford U. Freezes Faculty and Staff Salaries, " Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2003. It should be noted that the figures that Stanford University supplied for the AAUP survey, and that are reported in appendix I, showed an increase in salary levels over the previous year. This probably occurred because even though there was no general salary increase for continuing faculty, the university adjusted the salaries of some continuing faculty members who received offers from other institutions.
7. Much of the information about faculty salary increases in this report is based upon the AAUP survey of higher education institutions in the United States. In 2003-04, 1,446 institutions (representing 1,775 campuses) are represented in the survey. Data from these institutions are included in the basic results presented in table A and in many of the other tables in this report. AAUP staff compiled the data for the tables in this report and the appendices that follow that make use of the AAUP survey data.
8. Unless otherwise specified, the designation "private" in this article henceforth refers to private-independent (non-church-related) institutions.
9. See also Thomas J. Kane and Peter R. Orzag, Funding Restrictions at Public Universities: Effects and Policy Implications, Brookings Institution Working Paper (Washington, D.C., 2003), for evidence that student-faculty ratios have risen at public research universities relative to the comparable ratios at private research universities, that during the 1990s faculty workloads at public universities rose relative to faculty workloads at private universities, and that faculty members believe that the quality of undergraduate education has deteriorated at public universities.
10. As survey report table 3 indicates, 0.8 percent of all institutions reported that the average salaries of their continuing faculty members declined. AAUP staff checked each reported decline in average salary with the individuals who provided the data and confirmed that these declines actually occurred. Some faculty salary cuts have been reported in the press. For example, the Ventura County Federation of College Teachers, which represents 1,600 full- and part-time faculty members in California's Ventura Community College District, agreed to faculty salary cuts of about 4 percent to avoid layoffs. (Jamilah Evelyn, "Community College Faculty Members Take Pay Cuts to Avoid Layoffs," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 2003.)
11. Indeed, when we contrasted the average percentage increase in continuing faculty salaries at each public doctoral institution in our sample (as of January 20, 2004) with the percentage change in state appropriations for institutions of public higher education in its state, we found a statistically significant positive relationship between the change in state appropriations and the increase in continuing faculty members' salaries.
12. These percentages are the weighted average of the percentages at each institution in the sample, with the weights being the number of full-time faculty at the institution. For details about IPEDS, see http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/AboutIPEDS.asp.
13. These faculty include those with research or public-service (extension) appointments.
14. We restricted our attention to a sample of colleges and universities that both responded to the survey and reported positive numbers for part-time faculty members in each year. If a response for part-time faculty is coded as "blank" in the survey, we cannot distinguish between the number being zero and the institution's not reporting this variable.
15. If non-tenure-track faculty have shorter appointments than tenure-track faculty (which is likely), it is not surprising that the share of new hires that are nontenure track exceeds the proportion of faculty that are tenure track. However, this fact alone does not explain the growth in the share of new hires that are nontenure track.
16. Scott Smallwood, "Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members Vote to Unionize at U. of Michigan," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 2003.
17. In next year's report, we hope to provide information from various sources on the pay and benefits of non-tenure-track faculty.
18. We are grateful to Lee Tarrant, Office of Institutional Research and Information Management at Oklahoma State University, for permitting the AAUP access to the published volumes that summarize the results of the annual Oklahoma State Faculty Salary Surveys and for preparing special tabulations for us for the tables in this section of the report.
19. For example, see "Plus Ça Change: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1993-94," Academe (March-April 1994), table V, and "Not So Good: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1996-97," Academe (March-April 1997), table VIII.
20. For example, see "Plus Ça Change: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1993-94," Academe (March-April 1994), table V, and "Not So Good: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 1996-97," Academe (March-April 1997), table VIII.
21. Each discipline's average salary is a weighted average across institutions, with the weights being the number of faculty members in the rank in the discipline at the institution.
22. We had access to data from 1983-84 to 2001-02, so the numbers in the figures span the years 1984-85 to 2000-01.
23. This analysis was done for the eighty-nine public doctoral universities whose data had been tabulated by the AAUP office by January 20, 2004, and for which we also could obtain data on percentage increases in tuition from the Chronicle of Higher Education.