The salaries of Syracuse University professors rank 31st among 67 comparable institutions, according to this year’s American Association of University Professors Committee Z Report.
‘We’re not terribly far off but we do need to try and do a little bit better,’ said Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina.
Within the university, diversity exists among the salaries of professors in individual colleges. This is mainly due to competition within the job markets of each profession. English, drama and art professors are paid far less than professors in finance and law. Professors in the engineering department differ from those in the economics program, who differ from those in television, radio and film.
Professors with the highest average salaries are employed in the College of Law, earning an average of $143,876, according to the report. Economics professors make $140,143 and professors in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management make $130,285 per year.
Competition exists within the field of engineering, as civil and environmental engineering professors make $121,020 on average, as opposed to mechanical, aerospace, biomedical, chemical and electrical engineering professors, who earn an average ranging from $104,000 to over $115,000, according to the report.
Among those who earn the least amount of money on average are professors of art, transmedia, communication and rhetorical studies, and languages, literatures and linguistics departments, who earn about $65,000 to 69,000 a year.
SU as a whole had an average compensation, or salary plus benefit package, of $121,000, comparable to the University of Washington, University of Texas, the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Iowa. Other universities such as Ohio State University, SUNY Buffalo and the University of Connecticut have an average compensation of between $132,000 and 134,000, while universities such as New York University, Duke University, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania have an average compensation of between $150,000 and $190,000.
But rather than compare the salaries of professors to peer institutions, Spina said he believes it is better to compare the salaries of professors to peer programs.
‘That way, we can get a better sense of where our law professors stack up to peer law schools and where Newhouse stacks up to peer communications programs,’ he said.
The average salary for a newly hired professor, according to the report, is $128,873, about $11,000 more than professors who are currently employed at the university. This is a trend seen across the country.
With new hires, Cathryn Newton, dean emerita and professor of interdisciplinary studies, said negotiations are made on compensation packages and that during the annual review process, each dean takes into account any new or existing external offers.
If it’s possible for competitors to offer salaries that are impressively higher than the salaries people earn at SU, even a faculty member who isn’t interested in searching for another job may be tempted to leave, she said.
Newton said there has always been a recurring concern of how to attract the best faculty to Syracuse and whether or not the university would be able to keep them employed.
‘The faculty are the life of any university. They define which students are attracted to the university and how the students emerge once they’re here,’ she said. ‘Retaining the best faculty should be an immediate concern.’
Jeff Stonecash, a political science professor, believes the competition could even deter professors from seeking employment at the university.
‘So many people here run into other professors around the nation at conferences, exchange how much they make and say, ‘Well, I’ve gotta get out of here,” Stonecash said.
Stonecash believes younger prospects are worried about the issue because it directly determines their future. When people are employed at the university in their 30s and realize peers at other institutions are making more money, they begin to structure their careers around leaving rather than finding a solution.
‘Some professors are very committed to their teaching, but some are thinking, ‘You know, I’m falling behind the rest of the discipline, and the only way to catch up is to make an outside offer.”
Disparities between professor salaries have existed for as long as David Rubin, former dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, can remember. For the university to make the decision to raise the salaries of low-paid professors such as those at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, administrators would have to cut salary money away from other schools.
Such an action is difficult and rarely done, Rubin said.
He also said the university is an institution with aspirations larger than its resources, with a small endowment for a university as large as it is. After giving students money in financial aid, the university receives 60 cents of each dollar it makes and ends up with little money to spend on making a large difference in salaries.
Rubin said he is not a strong believer in average salaries and instead prefers merit pay. SU would be better off if it paid more attention to stronger professors, he said. He tried to do this as dean by making sure the professors under him felt fairly compensated for a lower salary.
‘You’re going to have some unhappy faculty, but the problems can be fixable,’ he said. He would often offer faculty travel money or other means of compensation to do so.
The university is now utilizing a task force consisting of deans and chairmen who look at aggregate numbers within the different colleges and stack them against peer institutions. The goal of the force is to make money available for salaries in the future, Spina said.
To address the concerns of professors in lesser-paid colleges, the university is developing a supplement fund process based on ongoing studies of a compensation system, said Patrick Cihon, associate professor of law and public policy.
But actions speak louder than words, he said.
In terms of the future, Cihon said although this issue is not the number one thing on faculty’s mind, it could grow to be a larger issue as housing and the cost of living rises over the next few years.
Stonecash also thinks if the administration does not address the issue, it could expand quickly.
Said Stonecash: ‘It’s going to have a long-term effect. That’s the real quiet thing.’
meltagou@syr.edu