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Pay low for non-tenure track teachers
To the editor, Your editorial concerning the fairness of faculty pay ignores some real salary inequities at our university. First you give the average salary only for full professors. You do not give averages for associate professors, assistant professors or lecturers. In political science, for instance, the median salary for associates is about $54,000, for assistants $46,000 and for lecturers, $43,000. Furthermore, salary levels vary according to departments with some departments making more than the national average and some making less. Most departments in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences have averages below those of the American Association of University's averages for peer institutions. For example, it would take nearly a quarter of a million dollars to bring all twenty-eight faculty salaries in the political science department up to AAU averages. Second, you do not discuss what is sometimes called the salary compression issue. In recent years, the faculty have not received significant raises. At the same time, the cost of living has increased and the salary offered to incoming faculty, right out of graduate school, has increased. For instance, when I came to Arizona in 1986 for a non-tenure track position, I was offered a salary of $25,000. Today the starting salary for non-tenure track is around $30,000, but for tenure track faculty it is in the vicinity of $40,000. That means that, because of the small raises in recent years, non-tenure track faculty like myself and some tenure tracks are making salaries that are very close to or actually below the salaries of new faculty. This year the state has allocated money to address the compression problem, and a number of faculty with low salaries have gotten significant raises. Faculty not eligible for tenure are not included, however, Those faculty are paid less, have little or no job security, and have less opportunity for promotion. Regular faculty can advance from assistant to associate and then to full professor with an increase in pay for each promotion. The others may be kept on indefinitely from year to year as adjuncts. Some, because they fill a gap in a department or make some important contribution (usually in the form of being an outstanding teacher), are given a three-year renewable contract as a lecturer. In rare cases they may be promoted to senior lecturer, a promotion that includes a $2,000 raise. There is no stage beyond senior lecturer for such individuals, however, and thus no hope for further raises tied to promotions. In other words, the inequity is not going to change as their career progresses. Furthermore, since they make less, the contributions to their retirement plan are less, and they must face the prospect of working longer than tenured faculty because they can't afford to retire and having less retirement income when they do retire. Your editorial did a disservice to many hard-working, loyal, underpaid faculty at our university who are not paid as much as they should be. Furthermore, your suggestion that those dissatisfied with their salaries move on ignores the fact that the teaching job market remains over-saturated in many disciplines making moves, even to less-desirable locations than Tucson, often impossible. Those individuals for the most part don't want to leave. they deserve better from the university and the state, and they certainly deserve better from you.
James S. Todd
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