University Times

As Pitt prepares its state appropriation request for the next fiscal year, a University Senate committee is again calling on the administration to close the gap between professors' salaries here and the average faculty pay among Pitt's fellow members of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

In an Aug. 28 letter to Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, the Senate's budget policies committee (BPC) recommended increasing the pool of money for faculty salaries by at least 5 percent for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2002.

"For several years," BPC members wrote, "average faculty salaries at Pitt have been falling further behind the University's stated goal of at least the median for each academic rank" of the AAU, a group of prominent North American research universities that includes Pitt and other public institutions, as well as private universities such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford.

"This goal had been attained, at least for some ranks, in the early 1990s, but the salary freeze in FY 96 and comparatively low increases for FY 1997-2001 have caused a significant deterioration in Pitt's salary rankings with respect to our peer institutions," BPC wrote.

"Last year," the committee noted, "full professors at the Pittsburgh campus trailed the AAU median by $5,700, associates by $3,600 and assistants by $4,200. Faculty librarians were almost at the bottom of their AAU/ARL [Association of Research Libraries] comparison group, and trailed the median by $7,500. The gaps between average salaries at our regional campuses and the averages of their AAU peers ranged between $4,500 and $10,200."

In recent years, the administration has argued that Pitt should benchmark its faculty salaries against those of public AAU schools only. They maintain that the private universities' huge endowments, high tuition, specialized curricula and freedom from state government regulation enable them to pay higher salaries than public AAU schools — and that the disparity of wealth between publics and privates is growing each year.

But BPC Chairperson Phil Wion said professors should continue to press for meeting Pitt's original goal of raising faculty pay to the median for the whole AAU, until Senate groups and the administration formally agree to change that goal.

Wion acknowledged that the Senate and its budget policies committee are advisory groups that can't enforce their recommendations.

"We still believe it's important for the faculty — through the Senate — to give advice at this stage as to what would be an appropriate target salary figure to use in planning for next year's budget," Wion said.

With inflation running at slightly less than 3 percent, and given the goal of reaching the AAU median for faculty salaries, Pitt should plan for increasing its salary budget by at least 5 percent next year, BPC members agreed.

"For more rapid improvement in our comparative standing, an increase of 6 to 7 percent would be desirable," the committee wrote. "We appreciate Chancellor Nordenberg's recognition that the recent history of salary increases has put the University at a comparative disadvantage, and we especially appreciate his decision to support a 4 percent increase in this year's salary pool, despite the smallest increase in Pitt's state appropriation in many years" — 0.6 percent.

At this time last year, BPC recommended increasing Pitt's pool of salary money by 5.5 percent, effective July 1, 2001. In its funding request to the state, Pitt's administration proposed increasing the salary pool by 5 percent for the current fiscal year, and pledged to hold tuition increases to 5 percent this fall.

But Pitt's less-than-hoped-for state appropriation resulted in a 4 percent salary pool increase and a tuition hike of 7.5 percent, Pitt's largest in 13 years.

— Bruce Steele