University Times

The highest percentage pay raises for Pitt full-time, continuing faculty this year were awarded in the engineering school (7.34 percent), the University Library System (ULS, 5.9 percent) and the natural science departments in the arts and sciences (5.82 percent).

University-wide, the average raise for full-time, continuing faculty was 4.47 percent.

While those numbers may not please professors in other units, they prove that Pitt’s administration is keeping its promise to help high-priority schools and departments — especially those in academic disciplines where salaries are soaring — to compete for faculty against peer units at other universities, according to Robert F. Pack, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management.

“We are doing what we said we would be doing,” he told the University Senate’s budget policies committee (BPC) at its April 4 meeting. “What these numbers demonstrate is that the University has been making a concerted effort to address market factors as they impact on the faculty, and has been allocating in a very vigorous way those market monies toward [high-priority] disciplines.

“I would also point out that the provost insists that anybody who received a market award be judged [by his or her supervisor] to be meritorious,” Pack added. “In other words, market awards aren’t handed out just because the whole department is below the average” for salaries within an academic discipline.

Pitt’s salary budget for the current fiscal year increased by 3.5 percent, distributed as follows: 1.5 percent for cost-of-living raises for all employees who received at least satisfactory performance evaluations; 1 percent for merit, market and equity raises as determined at the unit level, and 1 percent distributed by senior officers to raise salaries in units where national competition is driving salaries upward at rates above the average for most faculty.

Each Pitt unit got a 2.5 percent increase in its salary budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, 2002. Anything above that was distributed by the senior administration primarily to meet market demands, Pack said.

Pack reminded BPC why the average salary raise for full-time faculty (4.47 percent) exceeded both the base salary increase allotted to units (2.5 percent) and the University’s overall salary pool increase (3.5 percent): Salary funds are distributed based on each unit’s budgeted number of faculty members, regardless of how many of those positions were filled at the time.

Also, units enjoy some flexibility in allocating their salary monies. So, for example, some schools may have raised their part-time faculty members’ pay by 2.5 percent or less while awarding higher percentage increases to full-time faculty.

Even within engineering, ULS and the natural sciences, wide ranges of salary raises were awarded this year:

• In engineering, 19.6 percent of full-time, continuing faculty got raises of 10 percent or above. An additional 17.4 percent of these faculty members received raises between 7.5 percent and 9.9 percent.

• In ULS, 7.3 percent of full-time, continuing faculty librarians received raises of 10 percent or above. Another 18.2 percent got between 7.5 percent and 9.9 percent.

• In the natural sciences, 20.1 percent of full-time, continuing faculty got raises of 10 percent or better. Another 9.8 percent received raises of 7.5-9.9 percent.

Among other schools identified as high-priority units by Pitt senior administrators and trustees, the law school “tends to be a little more egalitarian in their salary increase policy,” Pack said. “I think that reflects the normal way that law school faculties operate.” The average salary increase among the law school’s 44 full-time, continuing faculty members was 4.29 percent. Only 13 got raises higher than 5 percent, and only three received 10 percent or above.

Among Pitt’s 66 full-time, continuing business faculty members, raises were less evenly distributed in response to rapidly rising salaries in some academic specialties, Pack noted. Nearly half of the 66 faculty members got raises between 1.5 and 2.5 percent, while about one-fifth received raises of 7.5 percent or higher.

Nationwide, salaries of continuing, full-time faculty rose by an average of 4.3 percent this year — 0.17 lower than at Pitt — according to a report released by the American Association of University Professors last week.

Average raises for Pitt faculty appear in a report, “Analysis of Salary Increases for Full-time, Continuing Faculty, Oct. 31, 2001, to Oct. 31, 2002,” produced by the University’s Office of Institutional Research (UPIR Report 03-010).

— Bruce Steele