Historic Salary Increases in Higher Education Can’t Keep Pace With Inflation
“this academic year saw the largest one-year increase in full-time faculty members’ average salaries in over three decades”
The vast majority of people in higher ed will keep voting for Democrats, despite this reality.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Historic Faculty Pay Increase Still Beaten by Inflation
While this academic year saw the largest one-year increase in full-time faculty members’ average salaries in over three decades, that still wasn’t enough to stop their real wages from falling due to inflation, the American Association of University Professors noted Thursday alongside its latest salary survey data.
They are preliminary data for the 2022–23 academic year; AAUP plans to release the final data in July. You can see trend data at this link.
According to the preliminary data, the 6.5 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers was enough to turn the 4.1 percent average salary increase into a 2.4 percent drop in real wages—the third consecutive year of real-wage declines for all full-time faculty.
The decline last year was worse, when a 7 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index—the fastest inflation since 1981—dropped real wages 5 percent, per the AAUP. The organization said that was the largest real-wage decrease on record since it began tracking in 1972.
For this year’s survey, nearly 900 U.S. colleges and universities provided data for about 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members, the AAUP said. Over 500 institutions also provided data on senior administrators, it said.
Glenn Colby, the organization’s senior researcher, said the regular changes between the preliminary and final data amount to “nothing that moves the overall findings.”
He said, “Typically, maybe 20 or so institutions submit data late to us and we add those, and then maybe another 20 make some corrections because some of the data is estimates that people come up with” and later find the actual values.
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Comments
Forget salary increases: for most of today’s academia, salary decreases would be more appropriate.
‘Fraid so.
Oh no, how terrible. Say, have you heard about Bud Light?
Take a look at the wage increases the military received, they fell further behind than this group
So tuition going up again real soon. It’s approaching $60K at the price-leaders, and there are over 50 such schools, and that doesn’t include room, board, books or any actual expenses, just the privilege of participating in class and having papers and exams graded.
And why not? Students continue to pay it and borrow even faster. Very few colleges have closed recently, so few that a tiny college closing makes the headline here.
Their business model won’t change until they feel the pain over and over again, and probably at first they’ll cut some important things while keeping the woke superstructure, to try to force students and parents to go along.