University Times

The annual comparison of Pitt faculty salaries with selected peers has had yet another wild card tossed into the mix. This year’s data does not include salary figures from the six University of California campuses that are included among the administration’s Pittsburgh campus peer group of 34 public Association of American Universities institutions.

Data for 2007-08 was not available for UC’s Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara campuses, effectively cutting the Pittsburgh campus’s peer group to 28 in this year’s salary report, and in some cases possibly artificially increasing Pitt’s standing in categories where the California schools outranked the University in previous years.

The comparison, prepared by Pitt’s Management Information and Analysis staff using salary survey data compiled by the American Association of University Professors, was presented May 23 to the Senate budget policies committee.

On the Pittsburgh campus, Pitt professors fared best, ranking ninth among the peer group, while associate and assistant professors were below the middle of the pack, ranking 17th and 20th respectively. Pitt’s librarians also ranked 20th in a comparison derived from Association of Research Libraries salary data.

Pitt’s regionals, which are compared to other peer groups, weren’t affected by the lack of UC data. Faculty at all three ranks at Pitt’s IIB regional campuses placed in the bottom half of their 18-member peer group. Pitt-Bradford held the 18th spot at the professor and assistant professor ranks.

Associate and assistant professors at Pitt-Titusville, whose pay is compared in a group of three similar institutions, ranked in the middle among their peers. UPT professors found themselves last.

The report perennially is accompanied by numerous caveats both from BPC members and administrators, who caution against drawing strong conclusions based on any single year’s data.

The usefulness of the report lies in tracking long-term trends, BPC chairperson Stephen Carr said. “I would not place much weight on any one particular ranking,” due to the uncertainty of the mix in any given year, he said, adding that Pitt over time has made progress in terms of its comparative rankings among public AAU universities. “That seems to me to be a very positive sign and in keeping with the aspirations that the chancellor and the provost have often made.

“It’s only over a four- or five-year period that you see trends that seem to me to be meaningful,” he said.

Robert Pack, vice provost for academic planning and resources management, emphasized that the dynamic nature of the comparison group — with some faculty being promoted in rank and others being hired or retiring — means the comparison isn’t exact from one year to the next.

For example, Pack noted that pay raises for Pitt’s continuing faculty averaged about 4.7 percent this year, but the numbers in the peer group survey went up about 2 percent because of the mix of individuals — including new hires — represented in the survey.

“The mix is the one thing that is very difficult to control in any given year. Part of it has to do with your hiring practices,” he said, noting that schools such as Berkeley tend to hire senior faculty, while Pitt hires more people without tenure. “Most of our hiring is done at the assistant professor level, so that we tend to always be turning over salaries,” he said.

Pack noted, for example, this year’s survey includes 491 Pitt professors — eight more than last year. Of them, 461 are continuing faculty and 30 are new, while 22 have left the University. “For the continuing professors, the average salary increase was 3.1 percent; the new professors had an average salary that was some $17,000 each below the average for the rank — because most of these are promotions from associate to professor. The 22 who left had an average salary slightly above the average,” Pack said.

Exactly how that compares with the faculty mix among Pitt’s peers isn’t clear, since that information isn’t included in the data. “It is true that if you assume that all of the institutions have the same dynamic at work in their rank structure that it would be consistent from year to year. I don’t have their data, so I don’t know,” he said.

Pitt’s tendency, Pack said, is to hire lots of new assistant professors and, in the case of librarians, new graduates including those from its own program. That tends to skew the composition of the group “slightly toward the low end,” he said.

Carr elaborated on Pack’s point, noting that if a number of assistant professors are promoted to the associate rank and new faculty are hired to replace them, the average pay is likely to decrease, or rise only slightly. Similarly, if more advanced professors leave and less-senior faculty members are promoted, the average pay for professors will fall.

Vice Chancellor for Budget and Controller Art Ramicone noted that another caveat in comparing the data lies in the fact that it is not adjusted for differences in the cost of living across the country. “If I’m being paid $110,000 in Pittsburgh, would I move to UCLA for $130,000?” he asked rhetorically.

Carr agreed that variables such as the cost of living or levels of state support make it difficult to make useful one-to-one comparisons with the data. “These statistics are open to multiple interpretations,” he said, reiterating the responsibility of BPC members to educate themselves about the complexities inherent in the data.

BPC co-secretary Philip Wion noted that Pitt’s tendency not to promote as generously as some universities from associate to full professors has the tendency to raise the average salary for faculty in these two groups, since new full professors would earn less than more senior ones and this would pull down the average. “The fact that people stay at the associate rank much longer adds another distortion,” he noted.

BPC vice chairperson Richard Pratt noted that the speed of promotions varies by department, with some disciplines tending to promote faculty much more rapidly than others.

Pack said that the rankings are not used to guide Pitt salary policy, nor does the administration have an express goal for an ideal spot in the rankings. “We set salaries in context of the University’s overall budget and where we think we need to be in any given year,” he said.

Among the peer schools, Pack said, “The salaries tend to be a reflection of the state environments in which these institutions exist, as well as, in a few cases, the absolute quality of the institutions,” naming Berkeley, UCLA and Michigan as examples.

Pack noted that Pitt’s highest rank, competitively, has been the professor rank, which suggests that faculty who stay at Pitt find over time their pay becomes competitive.

“Our biggest problem has been at the assistant professor level and that’s the one that in some ways we worry most about because that’s where you try to set salaries competitively. You want to hire the people you need to hire and you want to be able to hire them at a level that will keep them consistent as they move through the ranks. … We don’t want to lose people after five or six years.”

Carr agreed that there are some peer schools that Pitt isn’t going to be able to match in the near future. “We don’t want to be at the bottom,” he said. “I certainly believe we want to be in the upper half,” he said, even though Pitt’s ranking in the survey is not what drives the University’s salary policy.

Wion noted that the current salary policy references a goal of being at least at the median of the 60 AAU institutions, even though the focus has centered more on Pitt’s public AAU peers in recent years as pay at private institutions has risen faster.

Wion said BPC’s goal has been to see that Pitt is above the median among its public AAU peers. “Because we aspire to be one of the best publics, and in many respects we are, it would be nice if our salaries reflected those aspirations,” he said.

Regional peer groups

In the absence of agreement by faculty at Bradford, Greensburg and Johnstown on what schools should be included in their peer group, the three II-B campuses again are being compared with a group of regional/branch campuses at 18 Category II-B schools (categorized by an emphasis on undergraduate baccalaureate-level education rather than graduate degrees).

The Titusville campus is compared separately among a group of three Category III AAU public schools. Category III schools confer at least three-quarters of their degrees or awards at levels below a bachelor’s degree and use academic ranks to categorize faculty.

Debate continues as it has for several years on the issue of an appropriate peer group for comparing faculty salaries at Pitt’s II-B campuses. The University administration has taken the position that until all three campuses agree on a peer group, the current list will remain in use. Leadership changes, both in campus presidents and faculty leadership, as well as differences of opinion on exactly how a peer group should be determined have contributed to a lack of progress on establishing such a list.

“I keep waiting for progress,” said Pack. “The structure was that the campus presidents would consult with their faculties and advance a recommendation.” Pack said the presidents all are prepared to do that, but the faculties continue to ponder the peer group issue. “If they ever reach closure, they’ll reach closure,” he said.

BPC member Daniel Milberg, a psychology professor at UPG, said a task force there is working over the summer and will try to coordinate with UPJ, where faculty have embraced a 22-member peer group. (See April 27, 2006, University Times.)

UPG, he said, has come to the conclusion that the peer group should consist of II-B schools in specific nearby regions. When compared with that peer group, Pitt’s regionals ranked a little higher, Milberg said.

“It is our understanding that the Johnstown faculty have a whole other world view. Given the restriction that all three branch campuses must agree 100 percent on this list, my guess is likely that there won’t be a list,” he said.

Carr said he talked to the regional campus faculty presidents and explained that the comparison isn’t used to set salary policy. He said he urged them “to do what is useful, which is to agree without spending infinite time on irrelevant comparison groups and then pay attention to it over several years, rather than to spend endless time arguing about who’s in the comparison group.

“What we want is a reasonable group. It does not immediately determine policy. It’s a useful feedback mechanism to faculty at large — those who do not sit on budget policies committees — to figure out ‘where am I’ in terms of the group.

“It is a useful feedback mechanism. I would urge the branch campuses to come to some resolution quickly so we can start to get a four- or five-year picture of where they’re going.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow