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October 13, 2011

Administrators want time

to respond to report

Are high tuition discounts to out-of-state students impacting faculty salaries at Pitt? And do low faculty salaries negatively affect Pitt’s ability to fulfill its mission?

Senate budget policies committee (BPC) chair John J. Baker raised these questions as the committee met for the first time this academic year.

Baker noted that, according to the University’s mission statement, Pitt’s primary mission is to provide “high-quality undergraduate programs in the arts and sciences and professional fields, with emphasis upon those of special benefit to the citizens of Pennsylvania.”

In his Sept. 30 chair’s report, which drew criticism from administrators but little discussion among BPC members, Baker cited federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data, as well as American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and state data in making a case for his contention that  while professors and associate professors at Pitt earn competitive salaries, a significant percentage of core teaching faculty are low paid. He argued that tuition discounts “disproportionate” compared with Association of American Universities peers, are a major reason.

Baker said an expanded version of the report would be distributed to Pitt AAUP members and posted at http://pittaaup.org.

Arthur J. Ramicone, chief financial officer, questioned Baker’s conclusions and urged caution in interpreting IPEDS data, noting that Pitt’s research-intensive focus can skew the numbers and that not all institutions use the same accounting standards.

David DeJong, vice provost for Academic Planning and Resources Management, and Ramicone, chancellor’s liaisons to BPC, requested time to go over the data and return to the committee with additional information on how the administration views these financial issues.

BPC’s next meeting is set for 12:10 p.m. Oct. 21 in 512 CL.

At the request of the administration, University Times editor Nancy J. Brown agreed to delay publishing details of Baker’s report to give the administration time to analyze it and prepare a detailed response. Public Affairs Vice Chancellor Robert Hill said an administrative response would be forthcoming by the next issue of the University Times on Oct. 27. The University Times will publish the details of Baker’s report in that issue, as well as any administrative response to Baker’s report.

In other BPC business:

• In a closed session, Vice Provost David DeJong reported on a faculty salary cohort analysis prepared by the administration. The report sprang from University Senate President Michael Pinsky’s request that longitudinal salary information be compiled to determine, over time, whether faculty members’ salaries are keeping up with inflation.

Pinsky and others had argued that the University’s annual report on mean and median salaries cannot provide a means for an apples-to-apples comparison across years. Due to movement through faculty ranks or in and out of the University, each year’s report represents a different group of faculty, making it difficult to determine whether individuals’ salaries indeed are increasing. (See Jan. 6, 2011, University Times.)

DeJong told the University Times on Tuesday that his report tracked salary progress through 2010 for a cohort of 507 faculty members who had been at the University since 1995. A requested gender-based analysis of faculty salary trends will be forthcoming this year, DeJong said.

He said there are no plans to release specifics on what the faculty cohort report revealed. “It does paint a very different picture than the average analysis does,” he said. “The average analysis is extremely misleading and the conclusions drawn from that analysis are not borne out by reality.”

Baker would not comment on DeJong’s presentation, nor would Pinsky, who did not attend the closed session.

“The report spoke for itself and addressed the approach we requested,” Pinsky told the University Times.

• Ramicone said the attribution study likely would be available early in 2012. The report shows the revenues and expenses attributable to each of the University’s academic units and other responsibility centers.

—Kimberly K. Barlow

Filed under: Feature,Volume 44 Issue 4

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