In a recent Chronicle Review essay (“Your Pay Is Terrible? You’re Not Alone.”), Kevin R. McClure took higher education’s shoddy compensation practices to task, calling out salaries that don’t keep up with inflation, inaccurate job descriptions, and pay inequalities across departments and institutions. The faculty, staff, and administrators he spoke to expressed frustration at taking on more duties with no more pay, having to threaten to leave their colleges to get a raise, and the lack of clarity over how salaries are tied to performance.
“In a well-run organization, the nuts and bolts that shape compensation are routinely checked and updated to stay competitive and achieve strategic goals,” McClure writes. “But for many colleges, compensation practices have become the deferred maintenance of the human-resources world.” The result, he says, is exasperated workers.
We wanted to know if Chronicle readers have had their own compensation frustration, so we put out a request. Hundreds of you wrote in with stories of stagnant pay, opaque raise processes, and worries about the future. Here is just a small sampling of what you shared with us. Responses are anonymous and have been edited for length and clarity.
I left academia in part because, after seven years of receiving “exemplary” on every evaluation and taking on very significant service roles, I discovered that I was still one of the four lowest-paid faculty members at my college. If my pay had been higher overall, I might not have minded, but this was at a college with low salaries overall, and our salaries weren’t even keeping up with inflation.
My salary has effectively been cut by more than 13 percent in real dollars since 2016 because salary increases (when we’ve had them) have not kept pace with inflation. When I was hired, my university would triple any employee contribution to TIAA up to 3 percent. Since 2008, the university has either stopped its contributions (most years) or lowered it to a few percent. As a consequence, I will now spend several more years working than I had anticipated. I’ve lost the healthy years of retirement when I could have spent time with my wife, children, and grandchildren.
I have three degrees and am working towards my Ph.D., and I still make less than $45,000. I’m ashamed for even putting this out there. There was even an equity review done in my college and I came up as an example of someone being paid less than the others who had come in after me. I try not to look it at it as a race-based matter, but you almost can’t help but wonder why it took three whole years to realize that I was being paid less than my counterparts with the same position and title.
I have 30-plus years of working in my field and receive the same pay as a person who went straight through school to earn the degrees with no work experience. I am in an applied-science field where direct practice is highly relevant to our students. Many of our graduates are paid at or above our assistant-professor salaries.
I have an MA but have never earned more than what I make now at 62 ($52,000). Now I’m going to retire on a very meager retirement plan.
I’m a tenured full professor in the social sciences (anthropology) in an interdisciplinary department at a regional comprehensive. I was just on a hiring committee for a new assistant professor whose minimum starting salary would be exactly what I make. They will quickly make more than me, and I will not ever get raises to come even close to what they make as they are tenured and promoted.
When I was offered this position I asked if there was any way to negotiate the pay. I was told no. The pay was an increase from my previous position so I did not push back. As director, I am responsible for budgets, so at the budget review for the upcoming year, I was able to see that my predecessor was earning $20,000 more than me. When I brought it up, I was told that it was because she had more experience than me. It’s been two years and I have received one pay increase of 4 percent.
The downside of tenure is that it allows universities to only really offer significant pay raises twice in a career. I’ve been a professor at an R1 institution for over 20 years and all of my so-called merit raises have been less than inflation. Many of my colleagues have left because they can get paid the same or better in the private sector. Over those 20 years, my health benefits have slowly eroded, with more and more burden shifted to faculty in terms of higher co-pays, deductibles, and fewer choices. I would not recommend anyone pursue it as a career, which saddens me.
At my current campus, there is a $30,000 salary gap between me and the next lowest-paid person with my title in my division. People think bloated administrators are making tons of money, but I’m the head of my department and barely making $60,000.
The mid-range pay in salary bands is low, but close to comparable institutions. The problem is hardly anyone can get to the mid-range. After nearly five years, I am still at the minimum, which is $10,000 to $15,000 below median pay for my position across the region. A colleague is barely above the minimum and has been an employee for over 20 years. When the salary ranges are re-evaluated, people are moved up to the new minimum if below, but any percentage gains awarded above the previous minimums are wiped out.
After 20 years of working in the industry, I got a Ph.D. The only job I was offered after graduation (in the middle of Covid) was a one-year instructor position at $42,000 a year. They liked me and asked me to stay with a promotion to assistant teaching professor with a $2,000-a-year raise. With my student loans, I cannot even buy a used car.
As a non-tenured faculty member, I typically work 50 to 60 hours per week and barely get paid enough for me and my teenage son to live on. I often don’t know if I will be able to pay my expenses from one month to the next, especially during summer when I am not guaranteed a course. Last summer, I took out a small personal loan to cover the difference, which I am still paying off. This loan was for living expenses, not for any extravagances. I don’t go on vacation, I don’t make splurge purchases unless an occasional trip to Target counts, and I shop frugally for household items, home and car repairs, and groceries. I often feel I am one bad-luck incident away from being homeless.
Getting a visiting assistant-professor job after graduating with my Ph.D. in biology in 2014, I thought $47,000 per year was a fantastic salary. Then I realized that my kids qualified for free lunch at the local high school, and the $560 monthly student loan payments left me living from paycheck to paycheck, just like I had in graduate school. When I got the tenure-track position (same institution), the pay went up to a whole whopping $49,000/year. Inflation-adjusted, my base salary as a tenured associate professor (about $58,600) has now less buying power than my hiring salary 10 years ago.